


Ultraviolet

by MittenWraith



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Curses, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Human Impala, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Newly Human Castiel, Profound Bond, Shapeshifting, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-15 03:59:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11222853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenWraith/pseuds/MittenWraith
Summary: The world seemed to be settling back into a somewhat regular pattern of supernatural activity after Sam officially rescinded the British Men of Letters American visa and Cas had moved into the bunker as a full-time Winchester. What seemed like a milk run hunt goes pear-shaped when Dean becomes the latest victim of a soul-devouring curse. Breaking the curse and saving his life only lead to a bigger mystery when someone unexpected steps out of the Impala and walks right into the middle of their case.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this back in March-- around the time 12.15 aired-- as a future (hopefully) canon compliant case fic. It works if you imagine that the last 10 minutes of 12.23 involved Jack being born a few minutes earlier, storming out into the yard and dragging Lucifer through the portal into the AU himself and sealing it up behind them. Everyone else was just fine. :P
> 
> The entire idea for this story sprouted from a chat with Lizbob while I was watching 9.10 and got irritated with Crowley referring to Baby as a "phallus with wheels." One thing led to another, and I ended up with this.

“Who the hell lays curses on office supplies,” Dean muttered dazedly for what had to be the fourth or fifth time in the four minutes since he’d accidentally upended what had looked like an innocent desk organizer tray while tossing the victim’s office for hex bags. The smoke-colored plastic container had held the typical sort of desktop clutter; an assortment of pens, a stapler, paperclips and thumbtacks, a tape dispenser, a stack of business cards, and a few novelty executive fidget toys. A fucking stress relief ball, for chrissakes. Sam had been positive their victim was taken out by a curse, but he’d been thinking more along the lines of witchcraft-- a hex bag hidden in the victim’s office-- or even the outside chance it could be a vengeful spirit rather than a cursed object. And they hadn’t brought along a curse box to contain that sort of thing. “Fuck.”

Dean just barely had the presence of mind to think that this was where the Brits of Letters truly borked their logic. Taking out monsters, when regular old _people_ could be a thousand times more monstrous than any dozen vampires. Benny had said it in Purgatory.  _I think we both know which of our kinds kills more humans_.

Well, fuck if Dean wasn’t about to become another hash mark on the _killed by humans_ tally. Cursed object, vengeful spirit attack, _whatever_. It still amounted to a person-- or an ex-person-- willing to unleash this sort of nightmare onto whatever poor schmuck happened to bump against some used car salesman’s boredom relief toy stash.

He had a painfully random flashback to his two weeks as an executive at Sandover Bridge and Iron, thanks to Zachariah. Dean was distressingly relieved in that moment that no one had cursed his putter and golf balls while he’d been stranded there without all his memories of how to gank the supernatural. Both he and Sam had nearly been taken out by a run of the mill ghost, for fuck’s sake. And to think it could’ve been so much worse, found dead on his office floor wearing fucking suspenders and clutching a couple of golf balls. Death by unintentional douchebaggery wasn’t the sort of epitaph he was shooting for. He nearly laughed until another flash of pain seared through his side and he blacked out again.

 _He died clutching his balls..._  

He woke up on the plush carpet beside Floyd January’s desk with Cas kneeling over him, prodding at a blindingly painful wound on his left side. All Dean could remember was knocking something off the desk and then hearing an ear-splitting shriek before something stabbed him in the ribs. He didn’t even remember hitting the ground. It was worrisome, but not nearly as worrisome as the look on Cas’s face.

While Dean lay there feeling slightly out of sync with the apparent state of emergency his injury had brought on, Sam scrambled around the two of them using a legal pad to safely scoop everything Dean had knocked off the desk into a clear plastic file storage tub. Sam kept casting nervous looks over at him, and despite the overwhelming urge to yell at him to be more careful picking up all that shit before he accidentally cursed himself as well, Dean just couldn’t manage a snarky reply through the pain. Or maybe he was just going into shock. He idly thought that was a thing that probably happened when you got stabbed by ghosts, until another wave of pain crashed over him and washed all thought away.

“I’m taking all this shit out to the parking lot and burning it,” Sam said, making one last sweep of the floor and desk for anything that Dean could’ve potentially touched to unleash the curse. He hesitated in the doorway, torn between doing everything in his power to break the curse that was hurting Dean and staying to help his brother. When Cas glanced up at him questioningly, Sam began to ask, “Can you get him…”

Dean came to just enough to focus on Cas and reached up to grab his tie, dangling precariously close to what felt like a vicious and messy wound. It wouldn’t do to get his blood all over Cas’s tie. Dean hadn’t noticed that his hand was also covered in blood, nor that he’d left a bloody handprint clutched right around the middle of the fabric. The exertion of even that brief movement left him convulsed with pain again,  pulling Cas’s attention back to him and nearly yanking Cas down on top of him before his arm dropped limply to the floor.

“I’ll bring him out. The wound is getting deeper, and I don’t seem to be able to stop it,” Cas replied, tearing a strip off of Dean’s shredded and blood soaked shirt to use as a makeshift bandage.

Sam didn’t need to hear any more. He bolted for the front door, determined to stop the curse from progressing if at all possible. The coroner had told them that Floyd had bled out slowly over a matter of hours, but from watching Dean it seemed obvious the curse was intended to cause an excruciating amount of suffering along the way. Without any other hints as to who or what was behind the curse, an emergency salt and burn was Dean’s best hope now.

Cas held the gash along Dean’s side shut with his hands, pressing the tattered shreds of Dean’s flannel to the wound to staunch the flow of blood. He eventually got Dean to his feet and moving, but it was still a struggle to keep him conscious, let alone focused on getting out of there. Cas was pulling hard on the remnants of his grace just to half carry, half drag Dean out of the building toward the Impala, parked a careful and inconspicuous block and a half away.

Just a brief brush against some random desk implement had been enough to trigger the curse. Or the spirit. Or whatever it was. At first it had just been a jab to his side, but the longer the curse worked on him, the deeper and longer the cut grew. By the time they’d made it outside, it’d slit Dean open like an envelope from the middle of his ribs nearly down to his hip.

“That’s how we shoulda stopped ‘em, Cas,” Dean said in a moment of heightened lucidity between muffled groans of pain as Cas helped him down a step to the sidewalk. “Ship in a crate of cursed office supplies. Bunch of nerdy pencil pushers woulda never known what hit ‘em”

“Of course, Dean,” Cas replied, fighting to get the words out quietly and evenly, trying not to show any of the strain that was practically radiating off of him.

Dean heard the catch in his voice and lolled his head around to focus on Castiel’s face. It was better than focusing on the burning agony in his side. For some reason Cas didn’t seem to get what he was talking about. It was a fucking great idea, Dean had thought, but maybe that’s because he kept forgetting something urgent. The last few minutes were a little hazy in his memory, but Dean knew there was something important that he needed to remember. Something his life might depend on. Something earth-shattering. And then it slipped away again and he doubled over in pain, nearly pulling Cas down with him.

Down the block, Sam stood by the open trunk of the Impala. A match flared to life and dropped into the clear plastic box Sam had taken from the office at January Motors. It exploded with a painful shriek into a silvery-gray fireball, then fizzled out quickly into a more standard issue golden flame as the contents of the box melted into a gooey plastic lump in the gutter. Sam had leaped backward at the moment the spirit had been released and then immediately turned and began running over to Dean and Cas.

“Did it work? Is he okay?” Sam asked, taking on half the burden of carrying Dean, freeing up Cas to check on his wound again.

Cas lifted the edge of Dean’s shirt and Dean sucked in a hissed breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t believe so, no.”

“You think you’ll be able to heal him now the curse is lifted?” Sam opened the back door of the Impala for Cas and Dean.

Cas laid Dean out on the back seat and then climbed in after him, carefully arranging Dean so he could kneel on the seat between Dean’s legs. It was the only way to tend to his wound in the cramped space without causing Dean any undue pain. “I’m certainly going to try.”

Sam grunted and then shut the door and the trunk. He took one last look at the melted, smouldering remains of whatever the hell that cursed thing was, likely now permanently fused to the asphalt. He’d never seen a vengeful spirit trapped in an object with the ability to lash out like that\-- if that’s what it even was-- but apparently there’s a first time for everything. He shook himself off and climbed behind the wheel.

One glance into the back seat to see the frantic look on Cas’s face as he tried to heal Dean was enough. “Right. Hospital then.”

“Quickly, Sam.”

Sam drove and Cas carefully undid Dean’s makeshift bandage to assess his injury. It hadn’t seemed to grow any worse since Sam lit the fire that destroyed the source of the curse, but despite all his efforts to heal it, it hadn’t gotten any better either.

For his part, Dean passed in and out of consciousness. While he was out, everything seemed fine. He was laughing around the kitchen table with Sam and Cas and Charlie, or reliving the moment Cas told him Lucifer was gone, or that night last week when he and Cas had stayed up all night marathoning Firefly. Then the pain would come back with a vengeance and he’d fight his way through it only to see Cas still hovering over him and desperately pouring grace into the gaping wound on his side. And then he’d pass out again.

“How much longer?” Cas asked after a few minutes of Sam attempting to set a new land speed record for inner city driving.

“Five minutes, tops,” Sam replied, making a sharp turn at a deserted intersection, not even bothering to stop for the stop sign. “Can you hold on that long?”

Cas frowned down at Dean, at the pained look on his face and at the wound, now oozing not only blood but the opalescent glow of Dean’s soul. “I don’t think that was an ordinary spirit.”

Sam stiffened but didn’t let up on the gas. “What do you mean?”

“The wound isn’t healing because it’s carved into both Dean’s body and his soul .”

“What, like his soul’s bleeding out? Like angels bleed grace?”

Cas nodded even though Sam wouldn’t see it, laser-focused as he was on the road. “Something like that, yes.”

“What the hell? And you don’t have enough mojo to fix him?”

His grace had been gradually sputtering out for what seemed like years now. In the last few months though, since he’d finally made his peace with ditching Heaven for good and delivered his official notice, he’d been living in the bunker and gradually settling in to a more human sort of life and relearning how to do everything the human way. He’d barely even had a reason to use his grace for anything. It didn’t always work the way he hoped it would, but he might have one last trick up his sleeve. If it saved Dean’s soul, it would be more than worth it.

Dean’s eyes fluttered open and for a fleeting moment he actually looked happy before the pain set in again. Cas watched as confusion and then agony broke across Dean’s face, shattering that momentary look of contentment. He spoke as quietly and calmly as he could.

“I’m going to fix this, Dean.”

Dean tried to raise his head to peer down at Cas’s hands pressing the tear in his side closed, but the effort was too much for him. He let his head drop back against the car door and struggled to breathe normally. “Did I just hear you say my soul’s leaking out, or did I dream that?”

“Don’t worry, Dean. We’re almost to the hospital.”

Dean looked right into Cas’s eyes and he tried to smile between gasps of pain. “Not worried, Cas. You put my soul back together before. I trust you.” And then he passed out again.

Dean trusted him, but Cas wasn’t sure he could trust himself. He’d been a full-powered angel of the Lord the last time he’d saved Dean’s soul. Now he was more human than angel, with just a tiny shred of his grace left. It had taken an incredible amount of power to heal Dean from forty years worth of ash and char from the torments of Hell, but this was just one small wound in comparison. Cas closed his eyes and set to work, concentrating every last bit of his grace into the injury, focused entirely on knitting Dean’s soul back together and hoping the doctors at the hospital would be able to take care of the rest.

He channeled his grace into Dean’s flesh like he’d done countless times before. The physical injury would’ve been difficult enough to heal, deep as it was, but between the edges were a thousand smaller, invisible wounds leaking drops of soul. The moment his grace brushed against it, Dean’s soul streamed out in a sudden flood, as if reaching out for his grace, knowing that it would bring him relief from the suffering the curse was inflicting on it. Cas tried to soothe it, to coax it back where it belonged, to offer comfort. And then he realized Dean’s soul wasn’t leaking out, it was _fleeing_.

Some piece of the curse that had attacked Dean-- or perhaps more accurately the _entity_ that had attacked him-- had buried itself deep within his soul and was attempting to devour it from the inside out. Cas forced his grace deeper, seeking out the invading entity as Dean’s soul clung to him like a lifeline. He could feel Dean’s fear now, could feel the thing inside him gnawing and tearing away at him, and lashed out at it with a smiting blow. Whatever the attacker was, it lashed back.

Sam glanced in the rearview mirror as he neared the hospital. Cas hadn’t moved in more than a minute. In the intermittent glow of passing streetlights, he caught brief glimpses of Cas hunched over Dean, his hand pressed to Dean’s side, with his eyes closed and a look of excruciating concentration frozen on his face. He wasn’t about to interrupt whatever Cas was doing until they arrived at the hospital, so he kept his mouth shut and tried to focus on driving.

What Sam couldn’t see was the battle raging just under that still exterior. The moment Cas found the invader in Dean’s soul, it grated against his grace like cold iron. Cas let out a soft gasp and fought the instinct to recoil from it, and redoubled his efforts to drive the thing out.

It wasn’t like the Darkness, but it still felt similar somehow. Grey instead of black, but still just as hungrily feasting on soul light. Cas tempted it with the dull glow of his grace and distracted it long enough to engulf it in a blast wave of power. For a split second he felt his grace flare brighter than it had in years, almost as if another angel had given him a momentary boost of power. Cut off from its source of food, the thing panicked and twisted Cas’s grace and a piece of Dean’s soul around itself and then wrenched itself free of Dean’s body. Cas felt the recoil as the tether of his grace snapped away, pulled along after the lost shard of Dean’s soul.

Whatever the entity had been, it was no vengeful human spirit. Cas watched in horror as the last of his grace and a tiny piece of something else flowed out of him until he could no longer see it with his purely human senses. The last thing he felt before he lost consciousness was the wound in Dean’s soul healing over. He wasn’t yet sure of the cost of his sacrifice, but he’d been willing to pay it. As far as he was concerned, it had been worth it.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Cas awoke to Sam gently shaking his shoulder. He’d slumped forward over Dean, and as he came back to consciousness the hard-won battle he’d fought for Dean’s soul flashed through his senses like an aftershock, startling him back to the present. The peaceful look on Dean’s face reassured him that he would begin healing now. As he pushed himself up off of Dean’s body he tried to convince himself that he’d been protectively shielding Dean from further injury rather than having been gravely injured enough himself to have passed out on top of him.

“Is everything okay back here?” Sam asked, unsure what to do next. “You’ve been out for a couple of minutes now.”

Cas glanced around and saw the bright lights of the hospital’s emergency entrance shining behind Sam. He thought for one bleary moment that he was seeing Sam’s soul glowing around him like a halo until Sam crouched down and the illusion shattered.

“As okay as he can be without medical intervention,” Cas replied, and carefully climbed out of the car to help Sam carry Dean into the hospital.

They were met just inside the door by a nurse who took one look at Dean, blood-soaked and slumped unconscious between them, and summoned a doctor and several orderlies to assist. They loaded him onto a gurney and wheeled him off while Sam and Cas were left standing there, helpless to do anything more for him.

The attending nurse brought out a ream of paperwork for Sam to fill out, and asked about how Dean was injured. Sam hadn’t even gotten a good look at the wound for himself, so Cas explained that Dean had fallen against a decorative iron fence. It was the first thing he could think of that came even remotely close to approximating what appeared to him like an injury from a spear point. Both Sam and the nurse shot him skeptical glances at that, but after studying Cas for a few seconds she didn’t question him any further; just took the paperwork and hurried back to share Cas’s story with the doctor working on Dean.

“An iron fence?” Sam asked him quietly as they made their way back outside to move the Impala from where they’d abandoned it in the ambulance lane.

Cas shrugged. “The doctor won’t question it. I’ve seen similar injuries delivered by iron spears.”

Sam relaxed a fraction at that. At least the hospital staff wouldn’t have any reason to doubt their story, or investigate it too hard.

“But what about his soul?” Sam muttered even more softly.

Cas stopped just outside the glass doors. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt around for his grace, but as he suspected, he couldn’t summon up even a wisp of it. It didn’t quite feel the same as the last time he’d been fully human, but he couldn’t explain exactly what was different now. He opened his eyes to Sam’s expectant face and was relieved he could at least deliver _some_ good news.

“I cast out the entity that had been attacking him. It took a small piece of Dean’s soul with it, but I healed the wound and he’s not in danger of losing any more.”

Sam nodded and sighed with relief. His brow pinched together as he parsed out Cas’s entire statement. “Wait, _entity?_ It wasn’t a vengeful spirit?”

Cas shook his head. “It was far too powerful for that.”

“So do you think we killed it? Or is it still out there waiting to attack someone else?”

Sam had been about to reach down and open the driver’s side door when it opened itself. He stumbled back from it and drew the gun from his waistband in one smooth motion as a woman stepped out from behind the steering wheel. Sam’s first startled impression of her, given where they were and the state Dean was in, was a flood of terror that Billie the reaper had somehow returned from the dead in a set of blue hospital scrubs to claim Dean’s soul. He’d even begun to lower his weapon in resignation until the woman turned around and he could see her kind but frightened face. Definitely not Billie.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my brother’s car?” Sam asked, raising the gun again and reasserting his stance.

The woman looked afraid, but not of Sam or the gun, so Sam risked a glance across the roof of the car to see Cas squinting curiously at her, like she was familiar to him and he was trying to place where he knew her from.

“Sam, where is Dean? Why isn’t he with you? Or why aren’t you with him?” When the woman didn’t get an immediate answer from Sam, she turned to Cas. “Castiel, is he going to be okay?”

Cas studied her a moment longer before nodding. “His soul was injured, but not beyond repair. The doctors are tending to his physical wounds now.”

Sam glared over at Cas, gritting his teeth in exasperation, and then focused back on this strange woman who seemed way too interested in their business.

“Look, lady. Are you a nurse here or something? Why are you snooping around in our car?”

At that the woman rolled her eyes, took one step closer to Sam and plucked the gun from his hands. “It’s me, Sam. It’s…” She sighed and shook her head. “Your brother calls me Baby.”

Sam stood there staring, hands still outstretched and mouth hanging open as _Baby_ handed his gun back to him.

“Manners, Sam. It’s not polite to gawp at a lady like that. I don’t know how I ended up in this,” she said, waving a hand at her human body, “instead of _this_ ,” she patted the roof of the Impala. “But it is what it is, and I’m sure my boys will find a way to put everything right again eventually. First things first, though. I need someone to tell me how Dean’s doing right now. I worry. He lost a lot of blood.”

“I’ll take you inside to see him,” Cas said without hesitation. “I’m not sure the doctors will allow you past the waiting room, but we can inquire as to his status while Sam parks… you…”  Cas tilted his head to the side, glancing between what was apparently a human incarnation of the Impala and the more familiar steel version parked between them.

Baby rolled her eyes and pushed her way past a still-frozen-in-shock Sam to jog around the Impala-- _herself_ \-- to Cas’s side. Sam watched her go and had an unsettling flashback to Dean once telling him to be careful with Baby, to _pretend she’s a woman. A beautiful, beautiful woman_ ; and for the first time in his life, watching the human incarnation of the Impala walk away, Sam finally understood Dean’s feelings about his car. He shoved down the sudden wash of guilt that welled up in him, thinking over every time he’d been responsible for hurting her, and watched as Cas led her inside the hospital.

He only spared a second or two to wonder what the hell his life had come to. 

Cas and Baby stood in line at the receptionist’s desk, waiting their turn to speak with a nurse. Baby looked around anxiously, taking everything in with wide-eyed wonder, but Cas was otherwise impressed with her patience. She didn’t fidget like a normal human would; didn’t shift her weight from foot to foot or wring her hands. The only sign that she was nervous was the look in her eyes and the stiff set of her shoulders. He hesitantly reached out and laid a hand on her arm.

“I know this must be jarring to you,” he said. “Not only Dean being injured, but being here, inside the hospital, in this unfamiliar… vessel. The sights, and sounds, and… smells.”

Her shoulders relaxed and she looked gratefully into his eyes. “You would understand that feeling, wouldn’t you? Thank you, Cas.”

Cas stood there for a moment simply regarding her. Without his grace his observational abilities were severely limited, but he’d been learning to rely on purely human instincts more and more. Right now all those instincts were telling him to trust this strange woman. The line advanced and Cas dropped his hand as they shuffled up to the desk.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked, glancing between them, and then her eyes widened as she recognized Castiel. “Oh, you were just in here.” She looked down at her computer screen and then smiled back up at him. “Dr. Marsden is still working on Mr. Baker. If you give me a minute I can get a status update for you.”

Cas smiled at her and noted her name tag. “Thank you, Denise.”

She nodded and picked up the phone. Cas gave Baby a confident and reassuring nod in turn, all the while wondering how appropriate it would sound if he were to start calling her Baby out loud. He didn’t have long to wonder about it before Denise got through to someone in the room where Dean was being treated. He listened impatiently to her end of the conversation, frustrated that he couldn’t hear the other side too. After what seemed like ages, she finally hung up and smiled at them.

“Good news. Mr. Baker is awake, but quite groggy. They gave him something for the pain while they’re suturing him up, but he’s been asking for Cas and Sam.” Denise looked back and forth between them expectantly. “I assume that’s you two?”

“I’m Cas,” Cas replied. “Sam is his brother. He went out to park the car and should be back momentarily. Can we see him now?”

“The doctor will come get you when he’s finished, but it shouldn’t be too much longer. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the waiting room, if you’d like.” She pointed across the room to a small counter laid out with coffee supplies and a watercooler.

Cas thanked her and led Baby over to fix himself a cup. It had been a long time since he’d been able to enjoy coffee just for the taste of it, and he found himself strangely delighted by just the smell of the fresh brew. He poured a cup for himself while Baby watched on curiously.

“Do you mind?” She asked, reaching for the cup as Cas pondered the various flavored creamers available to him. “I know Dean loves this stuff, but having it spilled across your floorboards does not make for an accurate assessment of what makes coffee an enjoyable thing to drink.”

Cas grinned at her and slid the cup across the counter. “Tell me what you think of it.”

Baby raised the cup slowly, sniffing the contents before taking a very careful sip. She rolled the liquid over her tongue and closed her eyes.

“It’s warm, and bitter. Maybe too bitter. How does Dean drink so much of this?”

Cas poured himself a cup and then picked out several hazelnut creamers, holding up the tiny plastic cups of it to show Baby. “It’s an acquired taste, so I’ve been told. Some people prefer it sweeter, or flavored.”

Baby’s eyes lit up when she spotted a caramel flavored creamer. “Yes! I think this is Dean’s favorite. He always has this when he’s alone. He finds it comforting.”

A chill ran down Cas’s spine. He almost felt like an intruder listening to Baby talk about Dean. She likely knew things about Dean that he’d never willingly share with anyone else, and she didn’t seem to have any reservations about blurting out that private information. After a moment of staring down into the swirling cream in his coffee cup, Baby interrupted Cas’s thoughts almost as if she’d been reading his mind.

“Don’t worry, Cas. I know where the line is. I’m not gonna spill all Dean’s innermost secrets. I don’t think he’d mind you knowing about the coffee thing.”

Cas nodded at her, frowning minutely. “I already knew about the coffee thing.”

Baby smirked up at him, copying his movements stirring the cream into her coffee. “I had a feeling you did.” She lifted the cup and took another small sip, this time purring with pleasure. “That is much better. I can see why our boy likes it.”

Sam came jogging in and Cas called him over to relay the information they had on Dean. It wasn’t five minutes later before Dr. Marsden came out to find them. He was young for a doctor, probably not long out of medical school, with a dark mop of tousled hair and a white lab coat over a set of blue scrubs that matched the ones Baby was wearing. They eyed each other up and down, one medical professional to another apparent medical professional, and from that moment on Dr. Marsden addressed everything to her.

Sam and Cas shared a perplexed glance at one another, and then Sam shrugged and let Baby stand as their official representative. As long as she was handling it like such a pro, Sam would let her run the show.

“He was about a quart low, so we gave him some blood,” Dr. Marsden said. “We gave him something non-narcotic for the pain and stitched him up. I have to ask, though. Are you sure he didn’t hit his head when he fell? He lost consciousness there for a while and when he came to he was pretty groggy.”

Cas shook his head. He wasn’t about to tell the doctor it was likely a side effect from having a small chunk of his soul ripped out. “No, I believe it’s likely just exhaustion. He’s had a long day.”

The doctor studied him for a moment, gauging his reaction as he asked his next question. “He hasn’t taken and medications today, or had any alcohol?”

“No, doctor,” Sam cut in. “He’s been driving since before dawn. We’d stopped to find a place to stay for the night when he tripped and fell.”

The doctor shrugged, apparently convinced by Sam’s earnestness. “Well he’s got a place to rest up for the night now, though it’s probably not the sort of accommodations he’d been hoping for.”

Cas noticed Baby clenching and unclenching her hands at her sides and decided to nudge this conversation along, for her sake.

“Can we see him yet?”

“Sure. We’re gonna be moving him up to a room just as soon as we get his admission paperwork sorted.” He checked his watch. “Visiting hours are over for the night, but I can let you have a few minutes with him before he goes upstairs.”

Cas shared a significant look with Sam as they followed Dr. Marsden back to a small exam room. The doctor opened the door and told them someone would be around in about ten minutes to collect Dean. That didn’t leave them much time.

Dean was laid out on a gurney, his shirt cut away and his entire left side covered with bandages, but that’s as far as the nurses had got in undressing him. He still wore his bloodstained jeans and even his boots, since his injury began just above his belt. Sam was grateful they wouldn’t have to dress him completely to get him up and moving. Or worse, try and sneak him out wearing nothing but a hospital gown. Dean would never forgive him for that.

An IV drip ran to Dean’s right arm, and Sam hustled around the bed to disconnect it. On his way he dropped the small bag he’d brought in from the car onto the mattress by Dean’s feet. The commotion roused Dean and he grinned blearily up at Sam before lifting his head and looking around for Cas. When their eyes met, Dean grinned even wider.

“Guess you put me together again, eh?” Dean said, letting his head plop back onto the pillow as Cas leaned over the bed to examine him.

Sam rummaged through the bag and tossed Dean a clean shirt. “Help him put that on, Cas. Hope you don’t mind wearing the bloody jeans a little bit longer.”

Dean grumbled and looked down at himself, taking in the clean white bandages making a stark contrast to the dark denim now stiff with drying blood. “I’ll live. Pretty sure, anyway.”

Cas helped Dean sit up while Sam stood by the door checking the hallway outside. It seemed strange to put a buttondown shirt on over Dean’s bare torso without a t-shirt or a henley underneath,  but it would’ve been difficult for him to raise his arms with his injury and time was of the essence. Now that he was all sewn up and stable, they had to get him out of the hospital before he ended up admitted for the night and beyond their reach.

Dean just sat there compliantly, rather bemused by the way Cas was fussing over him. When he was done watching Cas do up all of his buttons, he smiled up fondly at Cas and reached up to gently pat his cheek. Cas stood there blinking at Dean, knowing that Dean’s affectionate behavior had to be a direct result of the painkillers he’d been given. He still wasn’t about to push Dean away, even though they were pressed for time. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of Dean’s hand on his face for just a few seconds.

“And you’re still putting me together,” Dean mumbled, barely loud enough for Cas to hear him.

Dean sucked in a sudden gasp and Cas’s eyes flew open, terrified that he’d inadvertently done something to cause Dean pain. He glanced down to check Dean over and then finally looked up to see him staring at Baby.

“Guys,” Dean said in a sort of whisper-shout. “I think we’ve been caught. Ixnay on the escue-ray.”

Cas glanced over to see Baby standing serenely in the corner of the room, almost like she was basking in the presence of her reunited family and that was enough to satisfy her.

“She’s not a nurse. She’s with us,” Sam said, checking the hallway again to be sure the coast was clear. “Long story, and we’ll explain as soon as we’re out of here.”

“How long was I out? You guys had time to make friends with the locals?” Dean asked. “What the hell did I miss?”

Cas ignored him and waved Baby over to help. “Baby, would you mind getting his other side?”

Dean’s head whipped around to gape at Cas. Cas saw a twinge of something cross Dean’s face, something he wanted to call _hurt_ , before he cringed in pain at the sudden movement and swallowed it all down with a gulp. His voice was strained when he spoke again. “No, really, how long’ve I been out if you’re calling some chick I never seen before _Baby_.”

“That’s my name, idjit. And you should know. You named me,” she said, bending down and lifting Dean’s right arm over her shoulders the same way Cas had with his left. “And you’ve seen me plenty before. I’ll forgive you for not recognizing me in your current state.”

Dean’s mouth opened and closed as he looked between Cas on his left and Baby on his right while they helped him to his feet. “B-baby? As in _my car, Baby_? What? You’re her? She’s you? How? Never mind. Maybe the doc changed his mind and gave me the good drugs and this is all a really weird dream.”

“I assure you you’re awake,” Cas said. “But right now we really need to leave. Can you walk?”

“Hurts like a bitch,” Dean said, testing his weight on his feet. “They gave me fucking _ibuprofen_ because they didn’t believe me when I told them I wasn’t high already. But I can probably make it.”

Sam let the door slip shut and frowned at the three of them waiting behind him for the all clear. “There’s nothing more you can do to heal him, Cas? Might make this a lot easier.”

Cas squeezed his eyes shut and then slowly looked up at Dean. He didn’t even try to hide the sorrow on his face as he shook his head. “I-I’ve done all I can for now.” He squashed down the thought that he might not ever be able to do any more again, but Dean smiled back at him and squeezed his shoulder.

Dean spoke softly, for Cas alone. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m alive, and we’re gettin’ outta here. I think you did plenty. Thanks.”

“Right,” Baby said. “We can all have a nice group hug once we’re safely on the road again.”

“She’s right,” Dean said, turning back to Sam.

Sam sprang into action, shaking himself a little and opening the exam room door just a crack to check the hallway. They could hear voices coming from the room directly across the hall, and Sam recognized Dr. Marsden’s voice among them. A nurse walked by pushing an EKG cart, and the moment she turned the corner at the end of the hall Sam gave the signal and pulled the door open. He stood back to let the other three go first, pointing the opposite direction from where the nurse had gone, away from the main emergency reception area.

Sam closed the door behind them and then hustled around to lead them toward another-- hopefully unguarded-- exit at the other side of the hospital. They walked in silence, other than an occasional stifled groan from Dean. Since visiting hours were now long over, the halls were mostly clear. The few times they encountered hospital staff, Baby exchanged a confident, professional nod with them. Despite a couple of double-takes at the strange group, nobody questioned who they were or why they were roaming the halls.

They made it outside to safety in less than five minutes. Sam ordered them to keep walking down the block away from the hospital while he ran back to fetch the car. Dean didn’t bother trying to conceal his groan at that suggestion. Nothing involving more walking sounded like a good idea to him, but he agreed with that plan anyway. Sam was about to take off when he suddenly froze and slowly looked back at Baby, hesitantly holding the Impala’s keys out to her.

“Um. Do you… maybe you want to drive?”

Dean and Baby both shot Sam nearly identical WTF faces. Dean said, “She’s not one of those freaky self-driving cars, Sam,” at the same moment Baby replied, “I ain’t no chauffeur.” 

Sam slowly dropped the hand with the keys back to his side and stood there dumbfounded. It sounded oddly logical when they put it that way, not that he’d ever have arrived at that rationale on his own. “Right. Sure. It seemed polite to ask, you know.”

“Sammy, this ain’t the time for fucking polite,” Dean said. “If I could walk on my own I’d go myself.”

“Right, going now.” Sam turned and jogged off toward the parking lot, leaving the three of them standing in relative peace and quiet on the wide sidewalk.

Once they got moving, Dean tried to distract himself from the pain of walking by asking the obvious questions. He focused on a point in the distance and tried to concentrate on breathing steadily in and out to keep a handle on the burning agony in his side, but he felt like he was missing some critical information and he couldn’t wait any longer to start getting some answers.

“So, anyone gonna tell me what the fuck’s going on here?”

Cas and Baby shared a glance, and she raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Cas frowned, also mostly at a loss to explain everything. Dean always told him to just start at the beginning, so that’s what he did.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Dean thought back for a moment. He wasn’t sure how reliable his hazy recollections were after a certain point. Things got downright fucking _weird_ there for a bit. There was no point bringing up shit that might or might not be entirely based in reality, so he went for the last completely solid memory he could recall. “Searching the office at the car lot. I guess I must’ve found the hex bag, then?”

Cas shook his head. “There was no hex bag. You knocked over a desk organizer filled with assorted office supplies. You tried to catch it as it fell, and then… you fell over. We thought you were cursed, so Sam collected everything you might’ve touched and burned it all while I tried to heal you.”

Dean grunted and looked over at Baby. “So how’d we end up here? At a hospital attended by a… a Weird Science version of my car?”

“I’d like to know that too,” Baby added.

Her voice had changed, pitched lower now, and Cas caught a glimpse of her feet as she walked along Dean’s other side, now wearing heavy work boots instead of the white sneakers she’d been wearing before. He also noticed that he no longer had to slump down with Dean to accommodate her shorter stature. When Cas glanced up at her face, he was taken aback to see-- instead of the kind-faced nurse he’d grown accustomed to-- a tall, burly man with a scruffy beard who reminded him more than a little bit of Benny. He blinked at her for a moment and hadn’t realized he’d stopped walking until Baby glared at him.

“What’s the holdup?” Dean asked, and then finally noticed the change that had come over Baby. He made a rather undignified noise and pressed himself more firmly against Cas as he recoiled from her. “Shit, you’re sure they didn’t give me any of the good drugs?”

“No, no,” Cas replied. “I see him too.”

Baby looked down at herself-- or himself-- herself. She rolled her eyes and urged them to keep walking. “What, you think cars have genders all of a sudden? This form makes it easier to carry your weight, Dean. It’s still me.”

Dean got himself moving again. “Yeah, but it’s a little weird to call you Baby when you look like that.”

Baby snorted. “Never stopped you before.”

Dean shook his head and tried to get the conversation back on track. “So how the hell did we end up here?”

Cas went on to explain everything that had happened before they arrived at the hospital, his attempt to heal Dean, and the mysterious entity that he discovered attacking his soul. Dean interrupted him with a dazedly muttered _I thought I dreamed that shit._ Cas just gave his waist a reassuring squeeze and carried on describing all the events that Dean had remembered with crystal clarity, but had been unsure whether to attach the label of _reality_ to. Dean interrupted him once more with a shaky laugh and an admission that he should’ve trusted his recollection of events. It had all just seemed to surreal. Cas shook his head and agreed with Dean’s assessment, but pressed on. He stopped just shy of the end of the story when they heard the rumble of the Impala’s engine and Sam screeched to a halt beside them.

“Easy on the brakes, Sammy,” Baby and Dean said in unison.

Sam did a double take as the new version of Baby climbed into the front seat beside him. Cas helped Dean get settled and comfortable in the back, as much as that was possible with the upholstery still smeared with Dean’s dried blood. Dean ran a hand over the seat and stared down at it in confusion. Sam interrupted his train of thought before he could prompt Cas to continue his recounting of events.

“So, motel? We can’t leave town yet until we’re sure that thing’s not gonna attack anyone else.”

“Food first,” Baby said, turning back to smile fondly at Dean. “Dean needs to replenish his energy.”

“Drive through, then motel,” Sam said, nodding in agreement and raising an eyebrow at Dean in the rear view mirror. “We can’t take you into a restaurant looking like that.”

Dean looked down at himself. His shirt was clean, but his jeans were stained all the way down to his knee with his own blood, bringing him back around to the important details he still needed in order to make sense of the rest of his evening.

“So if it wasn’t a curse, then what the hell did this?” he asked, pointing between himself and Baby. “Something that snacks on souls and turns people’s cars into… people. Shapeshifting people.”

Cas added very softly, looking down at the bloodstained seat between them. “And grace.”

Everyone went silent for a moment and Cas finally risked looking back up at Dean. Dean had one hand stretched out across the seat toward Cas and a look of deep concern on his face. Going by Dean’s reactions to the first part of his story, Cas suspected that Dean had already pieced together the truth of what happened next. Cas took a deep breath and picked up where he’d left off before.

“Whatever it was that attacked you, your soul was so desperate to escape it that you…” Cas watched Dean carefully for his reactions and pressed on, choosing his words very carefully. “Your soul sought sanctuary in my grace. I suspect I at least felt… familiar to you.”

Dean swallowed hard and nodded once. There was no point in denying it. He remembered vividly. He’d recognized the soothing touch of Cas’s grace and clung to it with everything he had. He was so caught up in the memory he didn’t realize he’d been doing it again, reaching a hand out to touch Cas’s where it rested between them on the seat. Cas seemed bolstered by his gesture, taking reassurance from the contact even though it was just a human touch now and not a meeting of grace and soul. It was still difficult to find the right words to describe the metaphysical battle.

“I tried smiting the invader, but it had already shrouded itself in a piece of your soul. It somehow… latched on to my grace and I tried smiting it again directly. All the while I was trying to heal the damage it was causing to your soul. I still don’t understand how it happened, but when it fled, it ripped out a shard of your soul along with what was left of my grace. I... I don’t know where it went after that,” Cas said, suddenly looking up and locking eyes with Baby. “But I think I have a pretty good guess.”

Baby looked back at him impassively while Dean glanced back and forth between the two of them, finally catching on to Cas’s meaning.

“Wait, wait, wait. You think Baby’s not really Baby, but whatever the hell it was that was trying to eat my soul?”

Cas shrugged, not taking his eyes off Baby. Sam cast a wary glance over at her in the seat beside him and then a nervous glance back at Cas and Dean.

“Should I keep going or is this an emergency?”

“I believe this is an emergency, but not one that necessitates pulling over for,” Cas replied.

“Gotta say that’s not real comforting there, Cas.” Dean glared at this potential Baby impostor, who was quite possibly the thing that had nearly killed both him and Cas a matter of hours ago, because Dean had heard enough of Cas’s story to trust his own recollections of those events now. And he remembered Cas nearly sacrificing himself to save him, the blasts of light, the burning. The screech of agony he was sure had happened entirely inside his own head-- or inside his soul.

“It’s not meant to be comforting.”

Baby frowned and looked down at her hands, gradually transforming into a woman who very much resembled Dean, only with longer hair and softer features. She was even wearing the same blue plaid flannel shirt Dean wore.

“I… I don’t entirely know what I am,” Baby finally said, sounding just as uneasy as the rest of them felt. “But part of what I am _is_ Baby. I can feel that much.” She ran her hand over the dashboard and closed her eyes, feeling the mechanical roar of the engine and letting it ground her. “The biggest part, it feels like. Every memory she has, I have too.”

“Well, that’s not creepy either,” Dean muttered.

She looked back at him with eyes he couldn’t tell apart from his own, and Dean gasped at the strange feeling of looking in the world’s wildest funhouse mirror.

“You’ve poured a lot of your soul into me over the years, Dean. I think… maybe that piece of you that got torn off… settled in me…” She frowned, trying to come up with a better explanation for how she’d come to be. “I don’t think this version of my face would feel quite so uncanny to you if you couldn’t feel the truth of that.”

Dean saw Cas nodding thoughtfully out the corner of his eye and stole a quick glance at him. “What, you buying this?”

“It is plausible,” he replied, his brow pinching together in thought. “More than plausible. The same way your soul clung to my grace when the entity attacked us, those pieces that broke off-- including my grace-- had to go somewhere. If they were still fighting to attach themselves to something familiar after I expelled them from you, they could very well have combined to manifest this incarnation of Baby as a self defense mechanism against the invading entity.”

“Or maybe whatever the thing that attacked us was powered up off my soul and your grace and made itself this lying meatsuit so it could trick us into keeping it around,” Dean countered.

He saw a flash of hurt cross Baby’s face before she turned to stare out the front window again. They said nothing more as Sam turned into a Wendy’s drive through lane and ordered up bacon cheeseburgers for everyone, Baby included. It was an awkward place to put their conversation on hold.

They ate in silence, Cas and Baby too, while Sam found a motel on the outskirts of town and got them checked in. He didn’t want to let either Dean or Baby out of his sight until he was sure the former was out of danger and the latter was not still a danger to them. That meant one room, and a likely uncomfortable night ahead for everyone.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Sam returned with a key to room 12 to find Dean leaning against the rear bumper of the Impala for support while instructing Cas on what to bring into the room. Cas had already shouldered Dean’s duffel and set Sam’s aside on the ground, but the two of them were still digging through all the weapons and picking up anything they might need if Baby-- or whatever she was-- turned on them during the night.

For her part, Baby was still sitting quietly in the front seat, staring at the motel like she was afraid they were about to make her go inside. Which, to be fair, they were. She just seemed genuinely apprehensive about that prospect now, glaring at the yellow stucco wall like it was the mouth of a dark and forbidding cave she’d been ordered to explore against her will.

Sam wasn’t about to interrupt her brooding, so he joined Dean and Cas, picking up his bag and taking a gun with a clip of witch killing bullets, an angel blade, and a bottle of holy water from the trunk, just in case. Cas nodded in approval at his choices and made sure Dean was equally well armed before shutting the trunk. Sam dropped the room key into Dean’s outstretched hand and they exchanged a series of significant facial expressions that constituted a silent conversation. It would be Sam’s job to make sure Baby followed them inside, and to babysit her until she was ready to venture into the big scary building. Dean draped an arm around Cas’s shoulders and the two of them hobbled off down the sidewalk toward their room.

“You seem to be in less pain now,” Cas said when they stopped to unlock the door.

Dean shrugged and pushed the door open. He still hadn’t let go of Cas since he wasn’t sure he was able to stand on his own yet, let alone walk, and the two of them had to sidestep through the doorway.

“Feels a little better, actually. I think eating helped. There’s nothing a good cheeseburger can’t cure,” he added with a smirk, patting his stomach and instantly regretting it when it tugged at his stitches.

“You should get cleaned up and change out of those pants,” Cas said, helping Dean sit on the edge of the bed closest to the door and then setting his duffel down beside him. “That can’t be comfortable.”

Dean laughed and unzipped his bag. “Yeah, it ain’t. Can’t take a shower with the bandages though.”

Cas frowned down at him as Dean dug through his bag, coming up with a clean pair of boxers and a black t-shirt. Without a word or so much as a glance up at Cas, Dean pulled out a second t-shirt and added it to his pile, along with his toiletry kit. If Cas was human again now he wouldn’t be able to zap his suit clean. Dean tried not to think about the last time he’d handed Cas a set of clothes and felt a fierce flash of protectiveness. He gritted his teeth together. Dammit, he would do better by Cas this time, and he needed to make sure Cas knew it too. It hurt to much to imagine anything else.

“You mind?” Dean asked, holding out one booted foot toward Cas. “I’d do it, but bending over kinda sucks right now.”

Cas gave himself a little shake and kneeled down to unlace and remove Dean’s boots and socks. When he stood up, Dean handed him the stack of clean clothes and then held out his hand. Cas just stared at it for a second until Dean rolled his eyes.

“Help me up. I ain’t gonna give myself a sponge bath in bed. I’m not that bad off I can’t even make it to the bathroom.”

“Oh, right,” Cas replied, taking Dean’s hand and pulling him gently to his feet, and then automatically moving close enough to wrap his arm around Dean’s waist for support again, even for the relatively short journey of ten paces to the bathroom.

Dean didn’t complain in the least. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he needed the support anymore just to shuffle across the small room, but he felt better with Cas’s warm, solid weight pressed to his side. Maybe it was a placebo effect left over from years of Cas healing him, but even without his grace Cas still had the power to make him feel better. This was absolutely not the time to start dredging up the reasons he felt the need to get defensive about his reaction to Cas’s touch, so Dean took a deep breath and tried to push that complicated tangle of feelings down-- at least until they could deal with this latest emergency first.

The bathroom was mercifully larger than the one in the last motel they’d stayed at. There had barely been enough room to open the door without having to step into the shower stall in that dump. Cas had plenty of space to maneuver Dean around and still shut the door behind them, and there were even extra towels on the rack above the toilet. That alone practically merited at least an extra half a star in the Dean Winchester Motel Ratings Guidebook.

With Dean leaning against the towel bar for support, Cas turned on the faucet to let the water get hot while he set out the stack of clean clothes and opened Dean’s toiletry kit. He was so busy with his tasks it hadn’t even occurred to him that Dean might not need or even want help getting cleaned up. He’d just assumed and invaded Dean’s personal space again. It hit him while he was running a washcloth under the hot water and wringing it out, and he froze and glanced up at the mirror in horror. He expected to be shooed out of the room, or at least chastised for being in the way. It pained him to think he’d have to leave Dean alone like this, but Cas had also admitted to himself that he was likely suffering a mild state of shock as well, and he’d found he felt better-- calmer and more grounded-- the closer he remained to Dean.

Over his shoulder, Dean’s reflection was smiling bemusedly at him. Cas turned to face him, holding out the damp washcloth.

“I’m so sorry, Dean. You don’t need me for this, do you.”

He reached for the doorknob with his free hand, just waiting for Dean to relieve him of the cloth so he could get out of the way. Instead, Dean grabbed his entire hand; amusement mixed with a wince of pain, maybe even a hint of fond exasperation warring for top billing on his face.

“Cas…” Dean started, his brow pinching together in a frown. He took a deep breath and gave Cas’s hand a tug until he let go of the doorknob and stepped closer, and then Dean spoke much quieter, befitting the small space. “I kinda do need you. Uh, in here. For this.”

Cas studied him carefully for a moment, but Dean never backed down. He didn’t look away or change his mind or express any indication of shame or embarrassment. It was harder to tell without his grace, but he’d been learning to rely more and more on his instincts and his human senses, and that came in handy now. Most importantly, Dean still needed him, and Cas was relieved.

“What do you need me to do?”

“I, uh… you’re doing it already,” Dean said, and then finally looked down, testing his balance and his grip on Cas’s hand before letting go of the towel rack and trying to unbutton his shirt one handed. “I didn’t really get a good look at the bandages back at the hospital, between being out cold and then waking up to get introduced to the human incarnation of my car.”

“It’s been quite an eventful evening, yes.”

Dean smirked at that but finally let go of Cas to use both hands on his shirt, and Cas reached back to set the cloth on the counter.

“I’d like to see the wound for myself, but I’m not sure we have enough bandages to cover it again.”

Dean nodded absently, more focused on the extent of said bandages covering his entire left side as his shirt fell open. Rather than remove the tape, Dean carefully felt around the edges of the wound through the gauze, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth as he mapped out the full extent of his injury with his fingertips. Cas tried to give him a better description of what it had looked like when he’d last seen it, both for Dean's benefit but also to distract himself from thinking too hard about Dean’s unspoken reasons for wanting him to stay.

“It began as a superficial cut, but by the time Sam burned the objects we believed may have affected you it had deepened considerably. I healed the worst of it before…”

Cas felt the sting of his failure again, and looking down at the blood staining Dean’s jeans or up at the flash of pain crossing his face instead of at the bandages wasn’t helping. Dean reached out and laid a hand on Cas’s shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, Cas, look at me.”

Cas took a deep breath and finally met Dean’s eyes again. There was no pain there now. Or at least it was a different kind of pain. Something more like worry, or guilt. Cas wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

“This thing hurt you just as bad as it hurt me, okay?” Dean said. “I get that. I’ll be fine. It’s already feeling a hell of a lot better than it did an hour ago. It’s just a flesh wound.” Dean’s grip tightened on his shoulder and his face darkened. “I’ll heal the old fashioned way. But what that thing did to you… just because you were trying to save me from something worse…” Dean swallowed hard and tried to keep his voice steady. “You been through that shit before. You didn’t ask to be human again. That’s not somethin’ that’ll just get better with time.”

Cas thought he understood what Dean was trying to say. _I’m sorry, are you gonna be okay too?_ He appreciated Dean’s concern, but his own humanity was something he’d been thinking about for a very long time, since long before he was faced with the reality of it that night. That was not a burden Dean needed to bear, along with everything else.

“I’ll be fine, Dean.” He cut off Dean’s attempt to call him out on a lie, because it wasn’t a lie. “I’ve been human before, and I’ve been living essentially as a human for months now. It’s something I expected to happen eventually, if not quite this... abruptly. I think I was only waiting for the right time. Saving your soul seemed like the right time.”

Dean blinked at him and tried to compose his face, but Cas hadn’t missed the flashes of shock, something that looked disarmingly close to hope, and then finally understanding.

“You _wanted_ this to happen?”

“Well, not this,” Cas replied, touching the edge of the bandage over Dean’s ribs. He looked up into Dean’s eyes. “But this? Giving up my grace permanently? Yes. The only reason I’d held on to it as long as I did was the fear that you or Sam would be injured and I wouldn’t be able to heal you anymore.”

Dean blinked at him a few times, letting that sink in. He started to say something, then stopped and let it all process through a few more rounds. He worked his way through surprise, concern, and near on a decade worth of guilt before finally settling on relief that Cas would’ve chosen this eventually. At least for the time being. He reserved the right to change his mind later. For now it seemed like the only thing about this clusterfuck of a situation with any sort of a silver lining.

“Well I guess it worked out for me, then.”

Cas grinned at him. “That was my intention, yes.” He became stern and narrowed his eyes at Dean. “Never do that again.”

Dean let out a nervous little laugh. “All right.”

They stood there staring at each other for another minute or two until Dean remembered there was something they were supposed to be doing. He also got his first good look at the rest of Cas, still wearing his trenchcoat and suit. His tie was crinkled with dried blood, but Dean could easily make out the imprinted shape of his own hand on the blue and white silk. Dean had to restrain himself from reaching out to straighten it. It left a strange hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he’d finally ruined something he’d spent years taking care of for Cas.

The cuffs of his coat and the front of his shirt were stained with Dean’s blood, and Dean frowned as he pulled off his own shirt, a little relieved of some of his worries about what giving Cas that change of clothes implied.

“I guess you’re gonna need something clean to wear too. I brought you a shirt, anyway.” Dean waved a hand at the folded clothes on the counter and draped his flannel over the towel bar. “We’ll work out the rest later.”

Cas frowned down at himself, holding out his hands and picking at the the dried blood staining his sleeves. He reluctantly tugged off his coat and dropped it to the floor, followed by his suit jacket and then his tie. Dean stood and watched him unbutton his shirt, fascinated by the act of Cas removing all those layers of clothing he’d been wearing for years. He probably shouldn’t just stand there and stare, but there were too many thoughts rushing through his head all at once to do anything else.

With his jacket gone, Dean finally got a better look at the uncanny pattern of the blood stain down the right side of his shirt-- almost a mirror of Dean’s own injury. He couldn’t help himself and reached out to feel the crusted blood.

“How’d this happen?” He finally asked.

Cas’s hands stilled for just a second before he continued unbuttoning his shirt and then tossed it onto the growing pile of ruined clothes. “I, um, may have lost consciousness while I was attempting to heal you.”

“What,” Dean asked with a smirk. “You passed out on top of me or something?”

“I was trying to save your life in the back seat of your car while traveling at a high rate of speed.” Cas turned to pick up the damp washcloth to wipe the stain of Dean’s blood from his chest. “There weren’t a lot of options on where to land.”

Dean laughed. “At least I was there to catch you.”

Cas bit his lip in an effort not to smile at that while he rinsed the washcloth and set it aside, turning back to Dean to see him still stifling laughter. He tilted his head and nodded down at Dean’s injury. “It doesn’t hurt when you laugh?”

Dean poked at the bandages again and frowned. “It still hurts when I poke it.”

Cas rolled his eyes, but Dean hadn’t even flinched at the prodding. Instead, Dean took a deep breath-- which also didn’t hurt. He peeled back just the top corner of the tape holding his bandage down and pulled it away from his skin enough to peer down at his injury. He shot a confused glance at Cas and then continued slowly pulling off the tape and gauze.

The top edge of the wound had healed completely, and the first few stitches looked like they’d been placed in perfectly healthy skin, the only blemish a reddish stain left by the antiseptic the doctor had used. The part of the wound that had been the deepest-- just below the bottom of his ribs-- still looked angry and a bit swollen, but nothing a couple of butterfly bandages and a few Advil wouldn’t be able to handle. Dean winced as he ripped off the last of the surgical tape and tossed the unnecessary bandage into the trash, running his fingers over the superfluous stitches and then looking up at Cas. Cas looked just as perplexed as he felt.

“So I guess your healing powers didn’t have some sort of time delay built in?”

Cas shook his head slowly and raised his hand on reflex to heal what little remained of Dean’s wound. He curled his fingers into a fist before he made contact and then dropped his hand to his side. “I have no explanation for this.”

“Looks like the doc went a little overboard with the needle and thread.”

“You needed every last one of those stitches two hours ago,” Cas replied.

“Don’t need most of ‘em anymore.”

Cas turned the faucet back on and picked up a clean towel. When the water was hot again, he wet half the towel and then handed it to Dean. “I think you can manage on your own, then, since you’re nearly healed now.”

“Cas, wait,” Dean said, restraining himself from grabbing Cas’s hand again.

Cas hadn’t even moved yet anyway, and Dean was beginning to feel a little ridiculous asking him to stay without any good reason. It’s not like he didn’t _have_ a good reason. Not wanting to be alone was a good enough reason for pretty much anyone other than Dean Winchester, but hell he’d been through the wringer and he was just too damn tired to come up with anything better. At least, not anything that didn’t edge too close to that carefully repressed tangle of feelings.

“Can… can you stay anyway?”

Cas breathed a sigh of relief. “I’d be happy to.”

“Well, okay then. Um,” Dean pointed at the pile of clothes. “I guess you can have first pick of the shirts if you want.”

Cas looked from the shirts to Dean, his confusion plainly written across his face. “They’re both plain black t-shirts Dean.”

“Yeah, well, just take the one on top, I guess.”

Cas ignored the shirt for now and instead sorted through the contents of Dean’s toiletry kit while Dean busied himself cleaning away the antiseptic and dried blood from his stitches. They’d cleaned him up pretty good in the hospital, at least the area immediately surrounding the wound. The worst of what was left was now below his belt.

Dean was about to regret asking Cas to stay. His injury was healing at an inexplicable rate, but this was absolutely not the way he’d ever imagined getting naked in a bathroom with Cas. And oh, that thought pushed a little too close to a different side of that feelings tangle, and one he _definitely_ didn’t need to deal with right then, but he was literally itching to get his jeans off. Dried blood ain’t comfy. He took another deep breath and set to work on his belt, pulling it from his belt loops and rolling it into a coil around his hand.

“I guess we can take the stitches out in the morning,” Dean said, setting his belt on the counter and unbuttoning his pants. He thought about soaking them in the sink but they were probably a lost cause. “If it’s healed up enough I might even be good for a shower by then.”

Cas nodded, watching Dean’s face carefully for any sign of pain, any excuse to jump in and help, to be useful. Or to at least not feel so awkwardly out of place just standing there watching Dean remove his clothes. A very small part of him lamented the fact he couldn’t simply make himself invisible anymore. “You think it may heal entirely by morning?”

Dean paused with his thumbs hooked into his waistband and stood up straight, twisting slightly so Cas could see that the wound had already visibly healed even further over the last several minutes. “Might even be able to pull ‘em out tonight.”

Again Cas held up a hand as if to touch but stopped just shy of actually doing it. “Is the pain subsiding, at least?”

Dean poked at the upper edge of the stitches where all evidence of the cut had already disappeared entirely, gingerly prodding his way down until he reached a point where the skin appeared healthy but had clearly not healed all the way through to the muscle beneath. He hissed in pain and dropped his hand.

“Yeah, still a bit tender, but it’s fading.”

Cas nodded as Dean got back to work removing his pants. Dean had only bent over far enough to shove them down to just above his knees before he tensed up. He slowly stood up straight and tried stepping out of his pants, marching in place trying to work at least one foot free and nearly stumbling, but the fabric was uncooperatively stiff with dried blood. It wasn’t even the injury itself that was bothering him so much as the stitches pulling and pinching in his skin as he bent and twisted around.

Cas didn’t need to be asked. He dropped to his knees as Dean gingerly lifted first one foot and then the other while Cas pulled the jeans off and tossed them atop their growing laundry pile.

Again Dean had to squeeze his eyes shut to stop his mind from wandering off to a highly inappropriate place. Cas kneeling shirtless in front of him, helping him out of his pants… and no, even the thought of it was too much now that he didn’t have the constant pain of his injury to keep his mind from wandering off down dark alleys. He cleared his throat and reminded himself that both of their injuries had gone a lot deeper than the freakishly fast-healing gash on his side. Cas may have accepted the loss of his grace over this shit, but they still had a puzzle to solve and a monster to hunt. And Dean still had a missing chunk of his own soul to worry about.

Cas stood up and carefully assessed Dean’s wound, and then leaned over to the sink to warm up the washcloth again. He turned back around and knelt down again to clean a trail of blood that had run down Dean’s leg. Dean watched him for a second or two before blowing out a resigned sigh and staring up at the ceiling. It was just too much, the warmth of Cas’s hands on his leg, carefully cleaning away every last trace of his blood, from his ankle right up to the hem of his boxers. He fiddled with the stitches in his side to give himself something less pleasant to focus on. With Cas’s face hovering in front of his groin, it was absolutely not the time for an inappropriate boner.

“Um, so… about my soul…”

Cas finished his task and then stood up, tossing the towel into the sink. He turned and squinted at Dean and then frowned, his whole face falling. “I can’t see it anymore. I keep forgetting.”

It was Dean’s turn to reach out toward Cas, hesitating for an instant before allowing himself to rest his hand on Cas’s bare shoulder. Cas glanced at his hand and then looked up into Dean’s eyes. Dean watched him, concerned, but one side of Cas’s mouth twitched up in a sad little smile.

“I’ll be fine, Dean. It’s like having a cut on your hand and forgetting it’s there until you get soap in it and the sting reminds you. It will pass.”

“Shouldn’t have to,” Dean said.

Cas shook his head and smiled wider, patting Dean’s hand on his shoulder, redirecting the conversation back to Dean.  “What about your soul?”

Dean hesitated for a few seconds before accepting Cas's change of subject. “Am I gonna be okay without it? I mean, if we don’t find the thing that took a bite?” Dean thought about it for a second. “Or worse, if we gank the thing is that piece just… gone? Forever?”

“Souls are not so easily damaged,” Cas replied. “It’s a similar injury to when I borrowed the power of Bobby’s soul to bring you and Sam back from 1861, though you didn’t volunteer to give up that piece of yourself the way Bobby did. It was… more traumatic for you, but I believe you’ll recover completely within a week or so.”

Dean nodded, his brow pinching together at the memory of Bobby complaining about his soulonoscopy and Cas looking like something the cat dragged in, but they’d both been fine after a few days. Well, as fine as any of them could’ve been dealing with Eve and her revolting monster army. Dean stopped those thoughts before he could go any further down that old painful road. He didn’t even want to think about Lily Sunder, butchering her own soul one small piece at a time for over a hundred years. Cas didn’t need a reminder of her right now, either.

“So what about you? You got a soul of your own now? Or did our mystery monster take a bite outta that, too?”

Cas blinked, and then frowned, dropping his hand from where Dean’s still rested on his shoulder. He looked back up at Dean with raised eyebrows. “That’s what feels different this time,” he said. “Or _felt_ different, for the split second I could still feel it before the last of my grace…”

Dean gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “What, you didn’t have a soul last time--”

“No, I’ve had… at least something akin to a soul since the first time I fell, back during the apocalypse. I never realized that’s what it was until Metatron cut out my grace and it was allowed to flourish.”

Dean stared at him in surprise. “Well now I feel like a dick for ever calling you a soulless bastard.”

“That wasn’t…” Cas stared back for a second and then realized Dean was trying to make a joke. He just shook his head and went on. “What I meant was that whatever carved off a piece of your soul, I believe it may have done the same to mine.”

“So we’re sorta in the same boat here,” Dean said after a moment, finally hearing Sam and Baby-- and hell if he’d ever get used to _that_ \-- unlocking the door to the room.

Cas shrugged and then crouched down to get a closer look at the wound. It was nearly completely healed now, at least on the surface. Even the swelling and redness was fading.

Dean cleared his throat and gave Cas’s shoulder a little nudge. “Hey, you wanna get the scissors outta the first aid kit and help me get these out?”

Cas nodded, reaching again for the doorknob, but he was stopped again by Dean’s hand still gripping his shoulder. Dean tossed one of the clean t-shirts at him to put on before going out to face Sam and Baby. He tugged it on while Dean gave him a few more instructions.

“I don’t know what the hell to do with all that,” Dean said, pointing down at the laundry pile while Cas struggled to get both arms through his sleeves. Dean took a deep, steadying breath and tried not to think about how broad Cas’s shoulders looked squeezed into one of his t-shirts and kept talking. “Burn it, probably. See how Sam and Baby are doing, and maybe get yourself any other clothes you need outta my bag. And maybe gimme five minutes to…” He waved a hand at the bloodstained boxers he was still wearing.

“Of course, Dean.” Cas bent down and folded all their ruined clothes into a bundle and then wrapped the lot of it up in his coat. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

The door clicked closed behind Cas, and Dean heard the three of them talking but couldn’t make out their words over the running water. He tugged off his boxers, letting them drop to the ground before kicking them up into his hand. Blood stained most of the left side and he briefly debated trying to soak them in the sink before giving up and tossing them in the trash. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. He gave himself a halfhearted sponge bath and then with only a little bit of effort and pain, tugged on his clean boxers.

By the time he’d finished brushing his teeth, Cas was knocking on the door and letting himself in. In addition to the first aid kit, he’d brought two pairs of jeans and a pair of clean socks for Dean.

“We planning on going somewhere?” Dean asked when Cas had shut the door and set everything down.

“Sam suggested we might want to confirm that the item that cursed you has truly been neutralized. Especially since we abandoned it on a public street.”

Dean frowned at that. He’d been so wrapped up in the aftermath of having been cursed, he’d almost forgotten they still needed to solve their original case. “Yeah, I guess we kinda took off in a hurry. And we still got no leads on who planted it there in the first place.”

“Sam and Baby have been looking into that, actually.”

“Really?” Dean said, now more eager than ever to be rid of his stitches and get back to solving not one, but _two_ cases: Floyd January’s and Baby’s. Because dammit, he loved his car, but she was supposed to be sitting out in the parking lot, not hanging out in their room looking like his twin sister and discussing potential leads on a case. It had to be at least nine kinds of wrong.

He opened the first aid kit and dug out the small set of scissors they used for snipping stitches and then handed them to Cas. Cas took them hesitantly, glancing from the tiny scissors up to the stitches, and then finally up at Dean’s face.

“I’ve never done this before…”

“Just take it slow, one at a time. I swear it won’t hurt as long as you don’t accidentally stab me with the pointy part.”

Cas nodded once and set to work, carefully pulling each stitch out while Dean tried to focus on the case. It beat the hell out of thinking about Cas leaning in close enough to feel his breath across his skin, his warm fingertips slowly and gently working their way down his ribs, while Sam was just on the other side of the flimsy bathroom door.

They’d only been in town for a few hours before their day had taken a sharp left turn, and they hadn’t even had a chance to interview the victim’s wife yet. Dean and Cas had talked to the detective who’d been assigned the case while Sam had visited the morgue to get a look at the body. With Sam’s theory of witchcraft or a vengeful spirit a serious possibility, searching Floyd’s office to be sure nobody else was in danger had become their priority.

“Sam’s certain there wasn’t a hex bag among the items he burned and I couldn’t sense any other spiritual activity, so it’s likely a cursed object,” Cas said as he worked. “But that still means that someone had to place it there for Mr. January to have come into contact with it.”

“Yeah, so we’re still probably looking for a witch,” Dean said, speaking quietly and evenly so as not to jostle Cas’s hand as he spoke. “And someone who was pissed at Floyd enough to want him to die a slow, painful death.” He paused again, staring down at the top of Cas’s head, trying not to let himself get distracted by the methodical movement of Cas’s fingers as he teased out the tiny sutures. “You think whatever that thing was had enough time to eat his soul?”

Cas’s fingers froze for a moment while he considered that and then resumed their delicate work. “It’s possible. I didn’t see his body, so I can’t say for sure.”

Dean almost asked what would happen to a soul that got eaten. He’d had a close brush with just such a fate before Amara changed her mind about devouring him and decided to spend some quality time with Chuck instead. He’d run across a lot of monsters that lived off human souls-- crocattas, shtrigas, and the creatively named soul eater-- but he’d never really wanted to know the fate of their victims eternal souls, despite nearly having nearly been one of those victims on multiple occasions. He filed it under things he was probably better off not knowing.

Dean grunted, and then had to reassure Cas he hadn’t hurt him, that he’d only been thinking. “Floyd didn’t have an angel on standby to save his ass.” He couldn’t see Cas’s expression, but he could see the blush on Cas’s cheek. It was startling for a second, because angels don’t blush. Seeing it felt like a small victory. For once Dean was actually sure that Cas understood his gratitude.

Cas finally finished removing the last stitch, and Dean got a good look at the healing wound in the mirror before he pulled on his clean t-shirt. It mostly appeared to be a days-old shallow injury now. At this rate it would probably fade entirely by morning without any trace it had ever been there at all.

Since they were headed out again, Dean resigned himself to putting on his socks. He still couldn’t quite bend over far enough to do it for himself, but Cas was happy to help. Dean was even happier that he was able to pull on his pants without any assistance. It required a strange act of contortion, laying the jeans out on the floor, slipping both feet into them and wiggling around to work his feet far enough down the legs before he could grab a belt loop with one outstretched finger, but he did it. Cas seemed to find the entire ordeal amusing.

When Dean stood up, zipping and buttoning his pants and then reaching for his belt, he noticed the second pair of jeans still sitting on the counter. He nodded his head toward them and then set to work on his belt. “Those for you?”

Cas hesitated for a second and then shifted his weight. “Is that okay? They’re your last clean pair, and I didn’t want to presume…”

Dean finished buckling his belt and smiled up at Cas. “Yeah, presume away. I told you to take whatever you need. What’s mine is yours.”

Cas kicked off his shoes without hesitation and then reached for his belt. “So you don’t mind?”

Dean’s brain had provided the appropriate record scratch. It had been almost too much having to share such a confined space with a shirtless Cas, and here he was about to drop his pants like this was no big deal. Dean had one incoherent moment to perfect his goldfish impersonation before his brain kicked back online. If this wasn’t a big deal to Cas, then he could be a grownup and not make a big deal out of it either. Dean shook his head and Cas took that as permission.

He got one glimpse of Cas’s thighs and had to turn around, because _damn_ Cas’s thighs were a big fucking deal. He mercifully spotted his flannel shirt hanging over the towel rack and was relieved by the excuse it provided for his sudden movement. Dean pulled the shirt on and then realized his jacket was probably toast, which only left him one more clean flannel shirt in his duffel. He’d packed for a hunt, not a massacre. And he hadn’t planned on having to share his entire limited wardrobe with Cas. Not that he minded or anything.

“Dammit, we’re gonna have to go shopping.” He turned around, relieved that Cas was fully dressed again, bent over and pulling on his shoes. “I got another flannel you can wear tonight, but between the two of us we’ve run through everything I packed.”

“Either that or we need to solve this case tonight so we can go home,” Cas replied, straightening up with a smile on his face.

“That seems kinda optimistic, since we ain’t got nothin’ yet.”

“Hey, watch who you’re calling nothin’, Dean,” Baby said through the door. “You two almost done in there? I just discovered that this body’s more human than I ever cared to experience.”

Dean and Cas stared at each other in mild horror for a second.

“Right,” Cas said. “Urination. It is unsettling at first.”

Dean rolled his eyes and the two of them let Baby have the bathroom.

“This is definitely going down as the strangest thing that’s ever happened to us,” Dean said, walking to the edge of the bed by his abandoned boots.

“It at least cracks the top ten,” Sam agreed.


	4. Chapter 4

Cas looked good in red, Dean decided as they made their way out to the car. It was a good thing, because he wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice. The deep red was the only other clean flannel he had with him. It was early autumn and the nights had been a little chilly so it sucked that his jacket and Cas’s coat were ruined, but at least they wouldn’t freeze to death. Dean still felt naked going hunting with only two layers on. It just felt wrong, like he was exposed and vulnerable. Maybe that was just the missing hunk of his soul talking.

“So, back to the scene of the crime?” Dean asked as he held a hand out to Sam for his keys.

Sam tossed them over as he opened the door. Dean almost dropped the keys and made a face at the strange smell wafting up from the car’s interior.  He glared pointedly at Sam and then crawled inside to search for the source of the weird chemical odor. The back seat-- which he only now recalled should’ve been covered in blood-- was conspicuously clean. Which meant Sam had cleaned it with whatever it was that smelled like plastic pine trees and alcohol. He backed out of the car and glared at Sam again.

“What the hell?”

Baby rolled her eyes and whacked Dean upside the head. “He swiped a bottle of detergent from housekeeping. I told him it was fine. I couldn’t stand the sight of your blood on my seats.”

“Well if it’s okay with you,” Dean said, his eyebrows pinching together as he tried to work out how he felt about his car voicing her opinion on using harsh chemicals to strip his blood out of the leather.

Baby smirked at him and slid into the seat behind Dean’s. Sam at least tried to look apologetic about it.

“I tried to tell her you’d be pissed, and she just said to let her handle it,” Sam said, repressing a grin. “I guess she handled it.”

“Get in the car, Sam,” Dean said, and then took his own advice.

They got as far as the street before Dean realized he had no idea where they were, or even which way to turn out of the motel’s parking lot. He’d been unconscious most of the way to the hospital, and not quite entirely alert after they’d left. Sue him. Getting your soul gnawed on by some mystery entity was a good excuse for being a little misplaced. Sam showed him where they were on the map so Dean could orient himself and he set off without another word. After a minute or two Sam broke the silence again.

“So while we were cleaning, Baby was asking about the case. Floyd’s been married nineteen years.”

“So you’re thinking it was the wife?” Dean asked.

“Cases like this, it’s almost always the wife,” Sam replied.

“It wasn’t the wife on that one case where everything was looney,” Cas argued, leaning forward over the back of the seat between Sam and Dean. “It was Dr. Mahoney taking inappropriate advantage of Fred Jones’s psychic gift.”

“Right,” Dean said, grinning up at Cas in the rear view mirror. “Where you interviewed the cat and that sweet old lady kept thinking you were her dead husband.”

“Yes,” Cas added, sitting back in his seat. “That was before I refined my interrogation technique.”

Dean just snorted out a laugh remembering Cas yelling at a grieving widow who’d been entirely innocent and stole a glance at Cas over his shoulder. “You’re a regular pro now.”

For the second time in half an hour, Dean caught Cas blushing. Sam cleared his throat, but when Dean turned to glare at him his brother was smiling.

“This time we did our homework. I hacked her credit card records. Turns out the wife’s been attending regular meditation classes down at a local hippie crystal shop.”

“You think she was channeling her chi into murder?”

Cas said, “That’s not how chi works, Dean,” while Sam shrugged and replied, “Could be a cover for a coven.”

“Good. Then I guess we’ll swing by there after we clean up our mess.”

“More like pry it up off the street,” Sam grumbled.

***

Sam’s assessment proved correct. It took Cas down on his hands and knees with a knife, carefully peeling up the edges of the melted plastic puddle from the asphalt while Sam gradually worked the tire iron underneath it to pry the whole mess free.

While he worked, Cas tried to decipher the contents of the former file box, attempting to determine which of the charred and melted items may have carried the curse. He and Sam were both meticulously careful not to touch the mass themselves just in case it still proved to be dangerous. Baby and Dean leaned against the side of the Impala while they worked, keeping watch for anyone who might try to interfere with what looked like a group of vandals tearing up the road. At least the side street they’d parked on earlier was mercifully deserted at that time of night. It took only a few minutes of finessing, and then Sam used the tire iron to knock the plastic glob a few yards down the road under the beam of a streetlight so they could get a better look at it.

The four of them crouched around the lunch tray sized mass of clear plastic like archaeologists at an ancient burial site around a fragment of pottery. Suspended in the remains of the file box were a confetti of paper clips, a larger lump clearly identifiable as a half-melted stapler, a criss-cross of colorful bars that had once been pens,  all embedded in a swirl of charcoal that used to be the cursed desk organizer Dean had fumbled at the beginning of his ordeal. Some of the small novelty items from the tray were entirely unidentifiable now, other than as colorful yet shapeless blobs.

“I got nothin’,” Dean said, gingerly getting to his feet.

“Should we risk touching it?” Cas asked, teasing at the edge with the point of his knife. “I think we should at least flip it over and examine the reverse.”

“I don’t see how it’s gonna look any different, but what the hell,” Dean replied. “Give it a flip.”

Sam backed away enough for Cas to lift one side of the mass up onto its edge with the blade of his knife and let it fall over onto its other side with a loud cracking sound. There were small sections where the plastic coating was thinner and there was quite a bit of asphalt grit obscuring the contents, but the only things they were able to see more clearly were the charred remains of a few of the desk toys, including a shriveled briquette that Dean suspected had been the squishy stress ball in its former life. It was still mostly round but less than half the size Dean remembered, and instead of the cheerful sky blue it once was, it was now coal black.

Sam shook his head. “I salted and burned everything, then doused the fire with holy water. If that didn’t break the curse, I don’t know what would.” His brows pinched together as he leaned in for a closer look. “We could set it on fire again, I guess.”

“It should definitely be incinerated,” Cas agreed. “I know recycling is the responsible choice in most circumstances, but I don’t think that extends to previously cursed items.”

“What were we trying to learn from this?” Dean stuck out his foot like he was about to kick the edge of the blob but Cas caught him by the ankle before the toe of his boot made contact. He glared up at Dean. “What? It’s not like we can trace the curse back to whoever left it in Floyd’s office from this mess.”

Cas sighed and stood up, ignoring Dean for the time being and addressing Sam’s concerns instead. “From what I observed when you lit the fire, I’m relatively confident the curse was broken.”

Sam nodded, still prodding at the mass with the tire iron. “Yeah. Regular old plastic doesn’t scream when you set it on fire.”

“You heard it too, then,” Cas confirmed. “And saw the manifestation.”

“I saw… something,” Sam said, frowning as he finally stood up too. “It knocked me backward. I guess I felt it more than saw it.”

“Well, then we can toss it in the trunk and have a nice bonfire later,” Dean said, bending over to pick it up before freezing when he was hit with a twinge of pain in his ribs.

What Dean hadn’t anticipated, but really should’ve in retrospect, was Cas taking his safety a hell of a lot more seriously than he did. The second he’d leaned over, Cas lunged toward him to stop him from touching the once-cursed puddle of goo, grabbing him around the waist and knocking Dean sideways. The two of them nearly plowed into Sam, who sidestepped out of their way as they stumbled past him. While the three of them were distracted, Baby casually picked up the blob and tossed it into the trunk.

“If you boys are done wrestling, or whatever the hell you call that, we should get going. That shop ain’t gonna investigate itself.”

Dean looked up at Baby, still half bent over with Cas’s arms clamped tight around him in a bear hug as he tried to breathe through the sudden resurgence of pain. He blinked up at her, because her appearance had changed yet again. He and Cas clung awkwardly to each other as they both stared at this latest form while Sam stood behind them doing a very poor job of containing his amusement.

“Dude, she looks exactly like the way you always describe Cas,” Sam said, barely getting the words out without laughing.

Cas slowly righted himself, casting a confused glance at Sam and then letting his hand slide down Dean’s back as he released him. “Is this how you see me, Dean?”

“What? No! Cas…” Dean’s whole face felt warm, and he watched in horror as Cas slowly walked over to inspect this grinning version of Baby.

“She has my coat,” Cas countered, turning a confused look on Dean. “But she’s shorter than me. Charlie said she expected me to be shorter. Do you tell people I’m this size?”

Sam muttered under his breath, “Now _that’s_ a Baby in a trenchcoat.”

Dean slugged him on the shoulder and shot his brother a threatening glare as he went to Cas’s side. Baby stood by the open trunk, running one hand over the inert plastic lump. Dean’s eyes went wide when he saw what she was doing and he momentarily forgot everything else.

“You touched it? What if it had hurt you? And why are you still touching it?”

“It’s not hurting me.” Baby shrugged. “You were gonna touch it. I’m not even a real person.”

“Exactly!” Dean countered, ignoring her first inconvenient points entirely. “It’s not like we can just rush you to the hospital. Who knows what freaky shit the doctors would find inside you.”

Baby and Cas both glared at Dean now. “Pretty sure I’m indistinguishable from a real person on the inside, Dean. I did eat a cheeseburger and use the bathroom. I think it’s fair to say it’s all standard issue in there.”

“But this,” Dean said, waving a hand up and down her sorta-Cas-but-slightly-smaller visage. “This ain’t standard issue.”

Baby picked at the collar of her coat the way Dean had seen Cas do a hundred times, and shrugged. “I thought you might like to see the weird, dorky little guy you tell people about so you can compare it to the real thing.” She grabbed Cas by the elbow and pulled him around so they stood shoulder to shoulder, narrowing their eyes in stereo at Dean.

“You tell people I’m dorky, too?” Cas asked.

Dean sputtered and rushed to defend himself. “Dammit, Cas. I said it _fondly_. I mean, does that look dorky to you? And who’s Baby to decide what I imagine you lookin’ like anyway? She ain’t in my head.”

“Maybe not, but I got a chunk of your soul in me,” Baby muttered.

Meanwhile Sam’s repressed giggles had exploded into full-on laughter.

“But look,” Dean said, stepping up into their personal space. “He’s-- _she’s_ \-- only shorter than you, because I think she’s tryin’ to mess with me here, right?”

Baby raised one eyebrow and smirked at him. And that was a weird look on a face that resembled Cas as much as Baby’s uncanny female version of Dean had resembled him. It all came down to the eyes, though.

“Look in her eyes, Cas. You’ll see what I mean.”

Cas did as Dean asked and leaned closer to inspect Baby’s eyes. He made a puzzled little grunt of a sound and then took a half a step back from her before inching around closer to Dean. “Yes, I see what you mean. It’s highly unsettling.”

He reached out like he intended to touch her face before frowning again and dropping his hand. For once Dean didn’t ask the stupid, insensitive question-- if Cas was okay, or if he’d forgotten about his lost mojo again. The bit of his soul powering Baby’s sense of humor might’ve been an asshole, but overall Dean tried his best not to be. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, so it didn’t take much to let the back of his hand brush soothingly against Cas’s fingers. Cas inhaled deeply and leaned into the contact for a moment, and Dean felt an entirely unwarranted surge of relief.

“It’s uncanny,” Cas said. “I noticed it when she had your eyes, but I thought I must’ve been mistaken. That I was imagining it.”

“Imagining what?” Sam asked, his laughter finally giving way to concern as he cautiously moved closer.

Dean just gave Cas a look filled with the gentlest _I told you so_ he could muster up.

That left it up to Cas to try and explain it to Sam, if he could. “I do have a theory… Baby said it herself earlier. You’ve poured a lot of your soul into her over the years.”

Cas clamped his mouth shut and Dean watched his jaw clench and unclench, his brow pinched as if it were taking a lot of willpower to keep from saying anything more. Dean looked from him to Baby, who looked like a slightly smaller and slightly more feminine, but equally determined version of Cas staring encouragingly back at the authentic version.

“Spit it out, sweetheart,” Baby said after a few seconds of tense silence. “I think it needs to be said, and I know Dean needs to hear it.”

Dean whipped his gaze back to Cas, who was now studying him with an apology in his eyes. Cas cleared his throat and studied his shoes for a moment before taking a deep breath.

“It’s all about the souls,” he said. “Well, and my grace, too. You may have poured yours into your car all these years, but I may have invested a substantial amount of… energy in, well. You.”

Dean’s face embarked on a wondrous journey of wtf as he pieced together the equation Cas’s confession had suggested. His cheeks felt hot and he was suddenly glad that not only had they stepped out from under the bright glare of the streetlight, but also that Cas didn’t still have angel powered thermovision or whatever. Much to Dean’s dismay, Sam had always been quick at this sort of metaphysical math, especially when he wasn’t part of the uncomfortable equation.

“So you’re saying your grace was already attached to Dean’s soul the same way his soul was attached to the car?”

Dean glared at his brother with mild horror as he reached the same conclusion. He shuffled back a step as he waved one hand at Baby and did his best to avoid dealing with certain implications about his soul’s prior relationship to Cas’s grace, or even that missing bit of Cas’s shiny new soul, by focusing entirely on the important facts at hand. Or so he tried to tell himself.

“So, what, you’re some kinda Frankensteined spawn of me and Cas? Then what happened to the thing that was trying to eat us? Huh? Is that bastard still in there too somewhere enjoying the free buffet?”

Cas nodded slowly. “That is a distinct possibility, yes.”

“Great,” Dean said, while Baby stood passively watching them bicker. “And we’re just hanging out with it waiting to see if it tries to take another chomp of one of us. How the fuck are we supposed to deal with the entity, or whatever? Or sleep? If we’re sleeping with the enemy here.”

“We’re not gonna get any sleep until we check out that crystal shop,” Sam reminded them, but he stayed a safe, wary distance from Baby anyway. “We’ll figure the rest out once we’ve got an idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“Fucking witches,” Dean grumbled, reaching carefully past Baby to slam the trunk shut.

“You may have noticed, but whether or not the entity that hurt you is still inside me,” Baby said, “the only thing I’ve eaten so far was a burger and fries. If it’s any consolation, I’m not feeling particularly hungry for your soul, Dean. And if anything, I feel rather viciously protective of it.”

Her jaw clenched in an eerie reenactment of Cas’s earlier frustration, and for no logical reason, Dean believed her.

He cast a glance back at Cas, wishing he still had his mojo so he could jam his hand into Baby’s chest, run a quick scan or whatever the hell he did, and tell them what the fuck she even was. But Cas seemed just as frustrated, if not more so, over that fact that he was just as helpless as Sam and Dean to know for sure, so Dean let it go. He’d survived more hunts than not without an angel on his shoulder, and he’d rather have Cas by his side with or without his mojo. They’d deal.

And then there was the strange innate sense of trust Dean felt for Baby, whether it was the fact that she was made up mostly of bits of Dean himself with a dash of Cas thrown in for good measure, or the fact that he really didn’t feel threatened by her when she wasn’t deliberately trying to mess with him, he simply felt safe with her. And more than a little protective of her, too.

It was a confusing mess of feelings that must’ve played out over his face for Cas to read the same way he always had. Cas smiled and sighed, reaching out to pat Dean’s shoulder before walking around the car to let himself into the back seat. Dean resigned himself to the task at hand.

“Fine. Let’s get this show on the road. Where’s the hippie witch shop?”


	5. Chapter 5

The hippie witch shop was only a five minute drive from Floyd January’s used car dealership. The shop itself wasn’t at all what any of them were expecting. Instead of an understated storefront in some suburban strip mall or an easily-overlooked hole in the wall joint on the town’s main drag like most of the occult shops they’d ventured into over the years tended to be, Alice’s Holistic Emporium was hardly inconspicuous at all.  That in itself gave them pause. Most shops that dealt with any sort of real occult shit did their best to stay below the radar however they could. They tried their hardest not to be noticed at all, or to otherwise disguise the true nature of their business behind an innocuous front.

Alice-- if there even was an Alice-- went in the complete opposite aesthetic direction. The shop sat in middle of a row of average looking commercial buildings, but it nearly blinded passersby to anything else in the little office park with its lurid purple paint job, prayer flags strewn from the roofline, and kitschy shit like bird houses, hex signs, potted plants, and wind chimes tacked up all over the front facade.

“Witches,” Dean grumbled under his breath as he drove past the building to find a safe place to park.

He didn’t drive far. Dean figured he’d already done enough walking for one night, and every other business around the deserted shared parking lot was clearly closed for the night. It was well past one in the morning after all. The dentist’s office he parked Baby in front of-- unless it catered to a vampire clientele or some other weird shit-- wasn’t gonna register a complaint that Dean violated their handmade, tooth-shaped _Patient Parking Only_ sign.

Dean only hesitated for a second before getting out of the car, taking a deep breath and girding his abdominal muscles before twisting around in his seat. He blew out the breath as he stood, relieved that the pain had subsided even further during the short drive. It felt good to just be able to move again, even if it still ached a bit. Regardless, the three-day-old bruise level of residual soreness was a vast improvement over the probably-gonna-die-from-soul-stabbing torment he’d experienced only a few hours earlier. He took full advantage of being able to move without constantly worrying about a resurgence of fresh agony and strode quickly across the parking lot toward the garish building. Sam, Cas, and Baby trudged after him as he reached into his pocket for his lockpicks, trusting everyone else to have his back.

Dean tried not to let the dazzling array of crap decorating the front of the shop distract him from his task. The one thing he did take notice of was the handpainted sign by the door. In addition to books and sacred items, Alice advertised classes in yoga, meditation, and the mystical healing arts. Whatever the fuck that meant. He hoped to hell it didn’t mean black magic and set to work unlocking the door.

The second he felt the bolt slide back, Dean took a careful step backward. He didn’t want to barge in unarmed, or while he was hunched over the lock and maybe still not a hundred percent sure he’d be able to move quickly enough to get out of the way of any potential booby traps. They’d dealt with some tricky witches over the years, but then again if there was hinky witchcraft going on in this cartoon of a building, it seemed likely that the really dark shit would be hidden away and not lurking around just inside the front door ready to attack every crystal gazing flower child who wandered in.

In the time it took Dean to carefully stand up, back away from the door and draw his gun, Sam barged ahead of him into the shop. Dean made an impatient noise and reached out to grab his brother by the shoulder to stop the charging moose, but his reflexes must’ve still been shot because he missed.

“The hell are you doing, Sam? We don’t need to make another emergency run to the hospital tonight,” he grumbled under his breath.

Cas made a strained little choking noise behind him. Dean slowly turned to see what his problem was when he had stop to do a double-take, watching yet another new version of Baby skulk into the shop on Sam’s heels. She was now, at his best guess, going for Xena Warrior Princess, Modern Biker Chick Edition, judging by her black leather outfit, long dark hair tied up in some complicated hairdo, and the shiny silver knife in her hand. Dean recognized it as the knife he’d shattered trying to kill Amara over a year ago. Damn he missed that knife.

She slipped inside the dark storefront and Dean finally finished turning to face Cas, knowing he looked like a dazed deer in the headlights and not even caring. Cas looked about the same.

They shared one moment of stunned silent commiseration over this development before Dean had to say something. It was unsettling enough seeing his own soul reflected back at him in female form by one of Baby’s previous incarnations, and then seeing a softer version of Cas, but seeing her now morphed into this complete stranger had shaken him. He’d been so willing to trust in this creature, to believe that she meant them no harm and that she was exactly what she’d stated she believed herself to be. But if that was true-- and dammit he would’ve sworn it was true until ten seconds ago-- then there had to be a rational explanation. Dean needed a rational explanation before he started doubting his instinctive trust of Baby... or whatever the hell she was.

He quickly checked over his shoulder to make sure Sam was still alive and well inside the shop before putting a hand on Cas’s arm and leading him a few feet away from the door, dodging around a planter box overflowing with what looked and smelled like a kitchen herb garden. He didn’t need anyone else overhearing this.

“So if she’s made of my soul and your grace,” Dean started without preamble, before Cas interrupted him.

“And some of my soul, as well.”

“Whatever,” Dean replied. “Some of you and some of me. I get why she’d be able to impersonate _us_ , but what the hell’s up with Kate Beckinsale in there?”

Cas avoided looking directly at Dean, shifting around, glancing over Dean’s shoulder. Cas’s gaze ran over the strange decorations adorning the purple bricks behind him. He seemed hesitant to answer, and Dean wasn’t having it. Any other time he’d be willing to let this go, but he could tell Cas was keeping something from him. They needed to figure this shit out, and fast, and they didn’t have time to get all touchy about the uncomfortable details. If those details might provide them with a clue as to what they were dealing with here, Dean needed to know.

After everything else that had happened, after Cas willingly sacrificed himself yet again to save Dean’s life and admitted he was completely content to do so, the least Dean could do was to not stomp all over his feelings yet again. Hell, their _souls_ \-- as if the fact Cas had a soul at all wasn’t a startling enough discovery-- had combined to create what for all intents and purposes was an actual human being. Allowing himself a little bit of a chick flick moment over Cas’s feelings wasn’t half as fucking chick flicky as _that_.

“Cas, talk to me. You okay?”

Cas continued staring at a spot over his shoulder as he worked through the convoluted line of logic that you’d expect to accompany the discovery of a soul-eating, person-generating monster. “She resembled Benny earlier,” Cas said without moving. “I believe she’s choosing representations of people who have occupied meaningful roles in our lives.”

Dean paused at that, thinking back to the first incarnation of Baby that he’d seen. Through the haze of pain, shock, and the rush to get out of the hospital unseen, it hadn’t really registered until Cas pointed out her second incarnation’s resemblance to Benny.

“Cassie,” Dean said quietly.

Cas finally met his eyes, brows pinched together in question. “You’ve never called me that before.”

“No, Cas. Not you. Cassie Robinson. Um… I haven’t seen her in more than a decade, but Baby… Back at the hospital, she looked a hell of a lot like Cassie did when I first met her, when I was nineteen. Twenty, maybe. She, uh, was pretty important to me a long time ago.” It was Dean’s turn to look confused, and even a little surprised now. As far as he knew, Cas hadn’t really had any deep and meaningful relationships with other people. He was momentarily relieved that Baby hadn’t shifted into a wavelength of celestial intent or a form that would burn out people’s eyeballs. So why the hell did he feel a stab of jealousy at the thought of Cas having other human friends? “Are you saying Selene in there is someone you, uh… know?”

Cas nodded as if Dean’s description of Cassie made perfect sense, taking a deep breath and starting in an almost apologetic tone. “Her name is-- _was_ \-- Evangeline Novak. She was Jimmy’s great-grandmother.”

“Wait, wait,” Dean said, a strange and very welcome wash of relief running through him, taking half a step closer to Cas and tugging at the collar of the red flannel shirt. “You still got some stray bits of Jimmy knocking around in there or something?”

“No,” Cas replied, eyes widening as he rushed to correct Dean’s assumption. “No, but my vessels are a bloodline, just like you and Sam are from a bloodline of vessels for Michael and Lucifer. When I was still a part of Ishim’s flight--”

Dean cut him off with a groan and let go of Cas’s collar to pinch the bridge of his nose. It was a reflex reaction to thinking about asshats who’d tried to kill him. Or worse, tried to kill Cas. From the resigned look on Cas’s face, he either still felt guilty about that entire mess with Lily Sunder, or maybe Cas felt guilty for bringing up the child-murdering bastard and upsetting Dean with the memory.

“Shit, Cas. Sorry. Just, uh. Not a big fan of that guy. He caused you a lot of grief.”

Cas tilted his head and the guilty look drained away into relief. “Well, that’s not of import right now. But when Ishim summoned us, turned us into unwitting accomplices in the murder of Lily’s daughter…” He trailed off, hands balling into fists and squeezing his eyes shut against the memory.

Dean reached out and set a hand on Cas’s shoulder, squeezing gently and speaking even more quietly. “Hey, it’s okay, Cas. You got him for it, for Lily. It’s okay.”

Cas slowly opened his eyes and nodded, then shook his head. “It’s not okay, Dean. I know can’t change the past, but I _feel_ it more now that I’m human again.”

Without another word, Dean pulled Cas into a hug. It should’ve occurred to him sooner, and he felt a little dense for trying to keep Cas at arm’s length and forgetting that he might be dealing with a whole shitload of emotions and reactions he’d no longer be able to manage with his grace. Humans need human contact; and if Cas was human now, Dean finally had a damn good excuse for dishing some out to him. Fuck personal space.

Cas hugged him back, awkwardly at first before sighing and burying his face against Dean’s shoulder. Dean melted into the hug, taking full advantage of every second to revel in the feeling of Cas’s arms holding him tight. So it wasn’t entirely altruistic on Dean’s end. Sue him. He could admit he needed the contact too.

Without lifting his face or pulling out of the embrace, Cas continued. “When Ishim called us to Earth, I needed a vessel. Evangeline said yes. She hosted me for less than a day, but Jimmy reminded me a lot of her. She was a good woman.”

Dean thought about that for a moment, recalling every detail of Baby’s newest form, and then his mouth acted before his brain could fully engage. “Wait, you were in a chick? In that leather clad, knife-wielding chick? Was she some sorta old-timey badass biker chick?”

“Hardly,” Cas replied, snorting, and finally leaning back enough to grin up at Dean. “She was definitely a woman ahead of her time, but I think most of Baby’s current wardrobe may have been conjured from another memory. I don’t recall ever seeing it before, but maybe it’s from this Kate you mentioned?”

It was Dean’s turn to laugh and shake his head. “Could be. If this was Underworld.”

Cas squinted at Dean. “That’s a film.”

Dean just nodded. “So Baby’s done her best impression of Cassie, Benny, some creepy genderbent version of me, an extra-dorky little version of you, and now one of your old vessels. At least she hasn’t tried to impersonate Sam yet. I’m not sure how I’d feel about that, actually…”

Dean didn’t have to spend too much time thinking about it anyway, because for once Sam’s interruption was impeccably timed. He stuck his head out of the front door of the shop and beckoned them inside. Sam’s eyes went wide at the spectacle of the two of them hugging it out in the parking lot, but he ducked back into the shop without commenting on what he’d seen, and Dean was doubly grateful for that.

Dean hesitated for just a second before releasing Cas. He seemed to be doing better, and damn if Dean wasn’t feeling a thousand times more grounded himself after their impromptu hug. He was trying not to read too much into it, but his heart rate had picked up without his permission and he felt a strange sense of hopefulness that he refused to look at too closely while they still had a case to solve.

“You gonna be okay?”

“It seems like a distinct possibility,” Cas replied, patting Dean’s back before letting him go.

***

They followed Sam inside, Cas walking a step ahead of Dean and trying to focus on processing everything he was feeling. Dean hadn’t been upset about Evangeline. It hadn’t changed anything between them, really. And he’d gotten a hug out of the deal, as well. A very comforting and much-needed hug. It had restored him in ways that his grace had never been able to. He might not be able to suppress his human feelings without it, but some feelings were definitely improved through expression. How could he have let himself forget that?

Hugging had shot straight to the top of the list of human expressions that Cas would be interested in exploring further. But that would have to wait for later.

They walked through the storefront filled with rows of bookshelves and display tables, the walls lined with all sorts of jars and bottles of herbs and oils, rocks and crystals, candles and incense and other ritual items for sale. Sam and Baby were waiting for them in the back room of the shop; a large open classroom with stacks of yoga mats pushed up against one wall and rows of workbenches set up along the opposite wall. Through an open door at the far end of the classroom they caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a storage room filled with shelves stacked straight to the ceiling with a very different inventory than what had been displayed out front. It ominously seemed to be stocked more like one of the storerooms back at the bunker than the cheerful shop front full of mostly innocuous wares.

“Fucking witches,” Dean grumbled behind Cas as they approached the last workbench, where Sam had several large and ancient looking books laid out.

“So get this,” Sam said, pointing at the first of the books. “Alice, or whoever, is a devotee of the goddess Bia. Which might go a long way toward explaining Baby, here.”

“She’s the goddess of personified spirit,” Cas said, nodding in understanding. “And of compulsion.”

“So you think I’m some sort of goddess?” Baby replied, smirking playfully at Cas. “Or maybe just one of her creations.”

“I think the latter is more likely,” Cas replied.

“Personified spirit?” Dean asked, leaning in between Sam and Baby to scan the page for himself. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Don’t forget the compulsion,” Baby added.

Dean glared at her for a second. “You’re being compelled to what? Borrow bits of me and Cas to play _This Is Your Life_? Why?”

Baby shrugged and Sam spoke up again. “Bia could’ve been the entity that attacked you, though. Taking your souls and Cas’s grace and… personifying them,” he finished, waving a hand at Baby.

“We were already personified just fine before,” Dean grumbled. “What happened to us was more like a… traumatic depersonification.”

“That doesn’t explain what happened to Floyd January though,” Cas replied. “If it had been Bia acting alone, why did she attack and kill him and not generate a new personification as she did for us?”

“Floyd didn’t have an angel on his shoulder,” Dean replied quietly, still focused on the book as he reached out a hand to give Cas’s arm a gentle pat, his hand absently lingering on Cas’s shoulder. “Cas kinda threw her a curveball. And then Sam toasted her cursed object before she finished chowing down on me. Maybe she just had to improvise.”

“Goddesses don’t tend to improvise, Dean,” Cas replied.

Dean finally looked up from the book, giving Cas a little half smile. His hand still rested on Cas’s shoulder, and Cas wasn’t about to do anything to discourage him from keeping it there.

“It says here Bia was a defender of Zeus,” Baby replied. “She was a warrior. If she’d been trapped inside one of Floyd’s toys against her will, maybe she was just trying to fight her way out.”

“Or maybe it was just a curse that had nothing to do with Bia at all,” Sam added, paging through another book. “Or at least, not directly.”

Dean peeked over his shoulder and read the heading. “Harnessing the power of the Goddess for personal gain. Well, shit.”

“So who had something personal to gain by attacking Floyd January?” Cas asked.

“A witch who wanted a better deal on a Prius?”

Sam glared at his brother and then skimmed through the chapter, Cas leaning around to read over his other shoulder. The pages gave step by step instructions for calling down aspects of the goddess and containing them inside a ritual object.

“Could be whoever made the charm wasn’t trying to kill anyone,” Sam added.

“So, an incompetent witch who wanted a better deal on a Prius.”

Sam continued to ignore Dean, but Dean was grinning at Cas. Cas had to fight not to laugh out loud. He didn’t think Sam would appreciate it. After a few seconds watching him bemusedly, Dean slowly let his hand slide from Cas’s shoulder and down his back, taking a half step closer as he did. Cas felt a familiar sense of comfort wash over him. He’d always felt better closer to Dean, but with his grace it had been different. It had been soothing in a gentle sort of way. Without the filter of his grace, Dean’s proximity felt like bubbling electricity. It felt exciting, and wonderful.

He’d never really had a chance to experience it properly the last time he’d been human. There’d been too much going on, and Dean had spent most of that time pushing him away. He wasn’t pushing him away now, and Cas was cautiously optimistic that Dean would want him to stick around this time. He hoped so. Cas was eager to continue to study this intriguing reaction. But like the hugging, it would also have to wait.

“You think Floyd’s wife was taking goddess trapping lessons here then?” Dean asked.

“That’d be my guess, yeah,” Sam replied absently, scanning the chapter through to the end before sighing in relief. “Says here that a standard purification ritual is enough to break the curse, so at least we know nobody else is in danger from it anymore.”

“Do we?” Baby asked. “Do we really?”

“I purified whatever it was that had been hexed,” Sam replied.

Baby raised an eyebrow and stared him down. “Floyd’s wife is still out there with the power to do this again.”

Cas nodded thoughtfully. “And that still doesn’t explain Baby.”

“How so?” Dean asked.

“If she’d been nothing more than the product of a curse, she would’ve… dissipated when the curse was broken,” Cas argued. “And if it were solely Bia’s work in rendering her, she should’ve retained some of Floyd January’s soul as well.”

“Maybe she did, and we just haven’t recognized it yet,” Sam replied, looking from Dean to Cas to Baby before frowning at her. “I mean, what’s to say this isn’t an incarnation from Floyd’s memory?”

“It’s not,” Dean replied, shutting down Sam’s speculation. “Just trust us on this one.”

“If she had some memory of Floyd, I believe it would’ve surfaced by now, correct?” Cas turned to Baby.

“All I know about him I heard from the three of you,” she confirmed.

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “So right now you’re our biggest clue. You’re what’s different between the attack on Floyd and the attack on Dean.”

“Well, her and Cas,” Dean added. “Still coulda been his mojo that made the curse go sideways.”

Cas bobbed his head from side to side while he considered that. “It could be, but I believe it’s unlikely. My grace was greatly weakened as it was. I don’t believe I had the power to generate an entire humanoid life form on my own, and the small pieces of our souls that were taken wouldn’t have been enough to make up the difference.”

“We need to talk to Mrs. January,” Dean said, shooting Cas a concerned little frown. “Compel her to tell us what was in that spell.”

“If she’s a witch powerful enough to harness a goddess to murder for her, we’re gonna have to be careful how we approach her,” Sam replied. “Maybe we should talk to Alice, or whoever our resident Bia devotee is here, first.”

“Knowledge is power,” Baby agreed.

Dean groaned. “That means we gotta come back and see this place in the daylight. It’s ugly enough in the dark.”

Cas patted his shoulder reassuringly and followed Dean back out through the shop as Sam and Baby cleared up their mess and put everything back exactly where they’d found it. They’d have to wait another eight hours before the shop opened for business, but then they’d be back for round two.


	6. Chapter 6

Back at the motel, Baby insisted she wasn’t tired and was content to watch over them. Dean had glared at her, and then at Cas for laughing at her reuse of his usual line.

“It’s no less creepy when you say it,” Dean told her as he nudged past her on his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“If you get tired just wake me up and we can switch off,” Sam replied, climbing into bed. “Or you can just lie down if you want. Maybe you’ll get some rest.”

Baby’s eyes went wide at Sam’s offer to share his bed. “You really believe me then? That I’m not gonna hurt you?”

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, I do.”

She seemed ridiculously pleased by Sam’s admission, and more than a little touched. She took a cautious step toward his bed and then sat down on the edge. “I’m not thrilled about sharing such a tiny bed with you, Sam. You’re a restless sleeper. You have any idea how many times you’ve busted off parts of me in your sleep? Cracked my air vents, kicked my dashboard? I think I’m probably safer in the chair.”

Cas laughed softly at that as he climbed into the other bed, and Dean violently spat out the water he’d been rinsing his mouth with before busting out laughing in the bathroom.

“Yeah, real funny,” Sam replied, grumpily rolling over to face the wall. “You try sleeping in a bed made for ants.”

Despite her teasing, Baby hesitantly lifted the edge of the blankets and crawled underneath, trying her best to get comfortable in bed despite still wearing the leather outfit, right down to the heavy, knee-high boots. After a moment’s consideration, her black leather getup was transformed into a soft green flannel shirt and a pair of ratty sweats Dean recognized as the pair he kept stashed in the trunk for emergencies. “Night boys. Sweet dreams.” She sighed, sounding completely content. “I say that every night. It’s nice to know you heard me for once.”

“I may not’ve heard it before, but I felt it,” Dean replied quietly, walking around to the other bed.

Cas nodded, and Sam mumbled out a sleepy, “Same.”

“So this is weird,” Dean said, stopping at the edge of the bed and looking down at Cas already curled up with the blankets pulled up to his chin.

“How so,” Cas grumbled, blinking up at Dean, already beginning to nod off.

“Baby’s a person,” Dean started, holding up one finger and then raising a second. “You’re a person, and we gotta share a bed.”

“I’ve always been a person,” Cas countered. “I just happen to be a human person who needs a bed now.”

“Stop making it weird and go to sleep, Dean,” Baby said.

Dean darted a glance over to her, but her eyes were closed. He could only see Sam’s back, but he just knew his brother was trying his damnedest not to laugh at him.

“Yeah, whatever.” Dean climbed into bed and reached out to turn off the light. Baby was right. They were just sleeping, because that was a thing all four of them apparently needed to do now.

Cas had already hogged more than his fair share of the blankets, so Dean gave the covers an indelicate tug. Cas opened one eye to glare sleepily at him in the gloaming light bleeding through the curtains, and Dean glared back. It was difficult to pull off with Cas looking so pathetically rumpled, his hair sticking up and his face all smooshed against the pillow, but he persevered.

“Come on, man,” Dean whispered. “I just need enough blanket to cover my ass.”

Cas lifted his head enough to witness Dean’s plight, and then apologetically relinquished his hold on the excess blanket.

“I’m sorry, Dean. I’m unfamiliar with the etiquette of sharing a bed.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean replied, punching his pillow once and flopping down on it. “It’s not rocket science. Just don’t kick me in your sleep and we’ll be fine.”

No one kicked anyone else during the night, but in the morning they were absolutely not fine. Dean awoke from an excellent night’s sleep with a heavy, comfortable warmth pressed all along his back. Sometime during the night he must’ve rolled over onto Cas’s side of the bed. Because the warmth at his back could only be Cas, and he couldn’t even lay the blame on Cas for this one. He blinked his eyes open to see just how bad the situation was. The empty side of the bed that had theoretically been _his_ side of the bed stretched out before him, the pillow he’d abandoned during the night mocking him from a foot away.

As familiar with bed-sharing etiquette as Dean was, he’d be the first to admit he was out of practice. Clearly.

Dean heard the bathroom door open and resigned himself to the fact that Sam had already borne witness to his shame and would never let him live this down. He also knew Cas was awake now, and was probably having the same thought, because Cas’s arm tightened around his waist and he pressed his face down between Dean’s shoulder blades, bracing for the inevitable commentary from Sam. Neither of them had braced hard enough for Sam’s reaction.

“GAAAHHHH!”

Sam stumbled backward, tripping over his own duffel bag at the foot of his bed and crashing in a noisy heap against the far wall of the room. Dean propped himself up on one elbow and craned his neck around to inspect the damage and glare at his brother. Sure it was a little embarrassing to get caught playing little spoon to Cas, but Dean didn’t think it merited Sam’s shocked horror and dramatic flailing and breaking shit.

“What the fuck, Sam. We’re just sleeping. It’s not like you caught us having seAAAAHHHH--” That’s when Dean spotted the true object of Sam’s disproportionate reaction sitting primly on the edge of Sam’s bed. “Gabriel?”

At the sound of his brother’s name, Cas practically bolted upright, whipping around so fast he knocked Dean off his elbow. Dean ended up faceplanting on his pillow, the blankets ripped off him in Cas’s rush to roll over. Dean groaned and levered himself up again, twisting around so he could get a better look at Gabriel. Or, _not-_ Gabriel.

“Calm down, guys. It’s still me.”

“I take it she didn’t look like this when you got out of bed?” Cas calmly asked Sam.

Sam shook his head, trying to regain a little dignity as he picked himself up off the floor and ran his fingers through his mussed hair.

“Baby is Gabriel,” Dean said, testing that disturbing thought out. “Babriel.”

“No, Dean,” Sam warned him.

Dean shrugged. “It’s accurate, anyway.”

“I’m not Gabriel,” Baby replied, standing up and heading toward the door. “I just woke up this way.”

“I guess if you had to pick an angel, Gabriel’s not the worst choice you coulda made,” Dean said.

“Speak for yourself,” Sam said. “Remember the time Gabriel turned me into the Impala? This is like some inside-out whackadoo flashback from hell.”

“As traumatic as that experience must’ve been for you, Sam, I agree with Dean,” Cas replied. “At least she doesn’t look like Zachariah. Or Lucifer. It could be worse.”

“Or Anna,” Baby added with a pointed look at Dean.

Dean opened and closed his mouth a few times, swallowed hard and nodded demurely. He had no intention of even glancing over his shoulder to see Cas’s reaction. But Baby still had her hand on the doorknob, and that gave Dean the perfect excuse to change the subject. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Baby frowned, puzzled, and it looked absolutely surreal on Gabriel’s face. “It’s morning. We’re awake. Aren’t we going back to talk to Alice at the witch shop?”

“We’ve been awake for like ten seconds,” Dean replied. “We need… or I need a shower. And some breakfast.”

“It is the most important meal of the day,” Cas added.

Sam snorted a little laugh and crossed the room to Baby’s side. “I think we’re gonna have to split up anyway. You two need to go shopping, right? Baby and I can go talk to Alice while the two of you find something decent and not blood-soaked to wear. There’s an outlet mall three blocks east of here. We’ll meet you back here in a couple hours.”

Dean sat there for a few seconds trying to process all that when Cas answered for him. “Thank you, Sam. Good luck.”

Sam nodded once and Dean thought they might be miraculously in the clear when Sam turned away to open the door. No such luck, though. He glanced back with a smirk while Baby walked out ahead of him.

“Plus I don’t need to watch you two cuddle anymore, adorable as it might be.”

Dean chucked a pillow at his brother’s head, but it floomped harmlessly against the door as Sam yanked it shut behind him. He slumped over onto the empty side of the bed, grumbling because he didn’t even have a pillow to bury his face in anymore.

“Would you like to take the first shower?” Cas asked. “Or has your wound not healed completely yet?”

From his position face-down on the mattress, Dean had to think about that for a second-- because he hadn’t thought about it since he’d woken up, despite several unscheduled faceplants. He groaned as he sat up again, but only from the normal morning aches and pains he’d come to expect. The special added bonus pain of the wound from the previous night was gone. He rucked up his t-shirt and inspected the perfectly healthy skin beneath. There wasn’t even a scar.

“Huh,” he said, running his fingers over his ribs. “It’s like it never even happened.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Cas replied, leaning in for a closer look.

Dean let his shirt drop and Cas sat up to smile hesitantly at him. He’d forgotten about his own injury so easily as it faded from sight, but he’d be damned if he let himself forget about Cas’s. It’s the reason they were sharing a bed, after all.

“How about you? You adjusting to humanity okay?”

Cas’s smile widened into something more genuine. “Yes, it’s definitely gone more smoothly than the last time, all things considered. Especially now that you’re healed again.”

Dean just nodded, trying to avoid thinking about _last time_ again. If they couldn’t get Cas’s grace back, his goal was to make _this time_ as good as he possibly could. It could be as simple as that, or as complicated as Dean’s instincts were screaming at him to make it.

Sitting together in bed, Cas all sleep rumpled and smiling at him like Dean made the sun rise and set, he was so tempted to make this incredibly complicated.

He sighed, bumping his shoulder amiably against Cas’s. That was as complicated as their current schedule would allow, but Cas seemed to appreciate it anyway. It was another good sign that maybe his instincts weren’t totally out of whack, and he held on to that thought as he smiled back at Cas and slid out of bed to stretch.

“Yeah, I think I’ll grab the first shower.”

“I’ll just wait here then.”

Dean rushed through his shower and put on the clothes he’d just taken off. He didn’t have anything else to wear, but as soon as Cas got out of the shower they were going to remedy that. Well, as soon as they found someplace they could get a decent breakfast first.

The motel was conveniently located next to an IHOP, and thank fuck Dean was guaranteed a decent stack of pancakes. Cas let Dean order for him, and the two of them devoured their pancakes and coffee in record time. That might’ve been due to the fact that Dean was so busy making a list of everything Cas would need now that he was human again and had material needs at all that he even forgot to flirt with their waitress.

Dean had been nervous about bringing it up, about how Cas would react to him being so presumptuous about Cas’s future needs for such mundane things as a toothbrush and a better pair of boots. He was relieved when Cas seemed more excited than upset about the prospect of selecting all of those things for himself again. The more they talked, the lighter the conversation grew. By the time they arrived at the mall, they were laughing and teasing each other about everything from personal grooming supplies to the fact they both felt underdressed without Dean’s jacket and Cas’s trench coat to insulate them against the cool autumn air.

Two hours later, Dean and Cas returned to the room wearing their new field jackets-- because luckily for Dean the outdoor apparel store where they did most of their shopping didn’t sell trench coats-- and laden down with at least half a dozen large shopping bags. Sam and Baby were already there waiting for them.

Sam had texted them five minutes earlier, but Dean hadn’t bothered to stop walking and put all his bags down to check the message. Dean assumed it was Sam wondering where the hell they were. If it had been an emergency, Sam would’ve called back, and they’d been almost back to the room anyway. He could wait.

“Dude, what the hell?” Sam said, eyeing their purchases from across the room. “Did you guys buy the whole damn store? And what took you so long?”

“Cas needed everything,” Dean replied, tossing one of the bags to Sam. “Plus they had flannels in gigantor size, so we picked up a few for you.”

“Thanks, I guess?” Sam opened the bag and glanced down at the contents before setting it aside. “But while you were clearing out Bass Pro Shops, we’ve been working the case, which you might remember is the whole reason we’re here.”

Dean put the rest of his bags down beside Cas’s and finally caught a look at Baby. He was hardly even surprised when she looked different yet again, but he definitely hadn’t been expecting her to look like this.

He was almost positive that nobody noticed him flinch when he saw Hannah, an angel who had once upon a time demanded that Cas _punish_ him with an angel blade through the heart, before Cas ended up spending way too much time with her on their extended road trip to round up rogue angels. Hell, she’d waited out in the car when Cas had come to help Sam force the demon cure on him. She’d been his excuse not to have to stick around, when Cas couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

So maybe he had some unresolved, possibly slightly antagonistic feelings toward Hannah. Maybe some of those feelings could loosely fall into the category of _jealousy_. But this wasn’t Hannah, it was Baby. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“So what did you go ask Alice?” Dean asked as evenly as he could manage. “Or was she busy chasing rabbits?”

Sam did a double take. “Dude, Jefferson Starship?”

“Jefferson Airplane,” Dean corrected him indignantly. “There’s a difference.”

Sam snorted and shook his head. “Whatever. Alice was…”

“A fruitcake,” Baby finished for him when he’d hesitated, at a loss for words.

“At least she had full-sized tea cups,” Sam grumbled, glaring at Baby grinning wickedly back at him for a second before shaking his head.

Dean had clearly missed something that had gone down between them, and made a note to ask Baby about it later. Maybe when she didn’t look like Hannah anymore.

“From what Alice said, Miranda January’s been studying with her for several years.”

“They worship the goddess together,” Baby replied airily, and Dean had another flash of the uncomfortable feeling he was determined not to think of as jealousy when he was forced to look over at her again.

Cas frowned at Baby’s comment-- or maybe at the glimpse he caught of Dean’s reaction-- and sat down to adjust the laces on his new boots, casting a lingering glance up at Baby-as-Hannah. “Do you believe her?”

“I do,” Sam answered before Baby could say anything more.

He tossed a questioning glance at Dean, having noticed the weird way Dean was brooding in the corner of the room and glaring at Baby. Dean shrugged him off with a sigh and forced himself to uncross his arms. He didn’t have to be happy about sharing space with a dead ringer for someone who’d once ordered his death and dragged Cas around the country to round up all the naughty little angels who just wanted to be left alone, but he didn’t have to be visibly hostile to Baby because of how she happened to look. He wasn’t even sure how much control she had over her physical appearance, after what she’d said about having woken up as Gabriel. He risked a glance back up at her and caught her grinning at him anyway. He was about to say something exceedingly dumb and reactionary, but luckily Sam cut him off before his foot got anywhere near his mouth.

“When I asked to see the sorts of things they used in their rituals, she took us back to her creepy storage room and led us straight to the books we were looking at last night. She even gave us full access to everything else on her shelves. I don’t think she knows half of what she’s got back there. She said she bought most of it at estate sales and on the internet. Pretty much anything she finds that’s even remotely connected to Bia, she buys it and stores it away.”

“Hoarders, Greek goddess edition,” Dean said.

Cas nodded thoughtfully, making himself more comfortable in his chair. “That’s likely why the spell was so powerful. There could be items and books in her collection that amplify the goddess’s influence, and it’s possible that the results were more devastating than Miranda had intended.”

“So we’re sure it was her that cursed her husband?” Dean asked.

“We’re gonna go talk to her next,” Baby said. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

She slapped her hands against her knees and stood up, eager to head out for her second official interview as a hunter in training. Something about her looking like Hannah, despite her still feeling so creepingly familiar in ways that Dean couldn’t even begin to describe, had unsettled him more than any of the other forms she’d taken on. Even her female version of him hadn’t left him feeling so repulsed, and he was actively avoiding thinking too hard about why that was.

Sam moved to follow her out to the car, but Cas pulled him aside and said something Dean couldn’t make out. Sam nodded, flashed a quick glance over at him, and then stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him while Dean was still trying to recover himself enough to get his feet moving. He stared at the door for a second before realizing that Cas had probably asked for a few minutes to talk about whatever the hell was up with him, and now here he was, forced to explain himself.

Dean sighed and dragged one hand down his face, and then turned to face the inevitable. He’d been expecting Cas to be upset with him, or at least annoyed with him. He hadn’t exactly done a great job covering up his… irritation at Baby’s new form.

“Dean,” Cas said, stepping right up into his personal space and setting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Dean, but I assume this is my fault. Hannah had been one of my closest allies for a long time. She was one of the only angels who believed in me, and she tried to help me when everyone else in Heaven either wanted me dead or else wanted nothing to do with me at all. When I thought _you_ were dead. In the end, she died for it.”

Cas looked absolutely miserable and could barely meet Dean’s eyes. Suddenly Dean’s petty jealousy seemed like a truly shitty reaction.

“I’m sorry too, Cas,” Dean said, and then cleared his throat. “She tried to have me killed once, you know. And when you wouldn’t do it, she abandoned you. I guess I never really got over that, and I never really thought about how that made you feel. I kinda wasn’t really myself at the time. Not like that’s an excuse. I didn’t even know she was dead.”

“She was killed trying to stop two angels from torturing me. They were trying to get to you.”

Dean thought about that for a minute and then realized what Cas meant. “When you showed up at the bunker half dead and under that curse.”

Cas nodded. “I understand you have some valid reasons to be upset with her. I do, as well. But more than that I regret that I ultimately failed her.”

“Shit, Cas,” Dean said, glancing up at the ceiling before pulling Cas into another hug. He must’ve been going for a record or something, giving Cas two unsolicited hugs in two days. “You didn’t fail her. I know you tried to do your best for her, like you do for everyone. She made her own choices.”

Cas nodded against his shoulder. Dean rubbed a soothing hand over his back until Cas collected himself with a sigh and stood up straight to look into his face with a tiny hint of a smile. “She did. She made her own choices. More than most angels ever could. I suppose that has to be something.”

Cas looked at him for a moment, slowly refocusing on Dean from whatever memory he’d been pondering, and his smile dropped away.

“I’d meant to be comforting _you_ , and here you are reassuring _me_. That hardly seems fair.”

Dean shrugged. “She ordered up my death once, and then she dragged you off for a road trip the second I became human again. I don’t really got a lot to complain about in the grand scheme.”

“She didn’t order your death, she just didn’t understand what she was asking, or that she’d been manipulated into believing Metatron’s lies.”

“I guess you had plenty of time to clear it up on your little adventures.”

Something in Dean’s voice must’ve betrayed that lingering hint of bitterness he couldn’t suppress. Cas narrowed his eyes and studied Dean carefully. Dean tried to brush it off, pasting on a neutral smile, but it was too late. Cas had seen through him even without angelvision.

“Are you upset that I left with Hannah after you were cured?”

Dean stood there, his mouth opening and closing. He might as well have been a butterfly pinned to the wall for how trapped he felt. Why did Cas have that weird power to make him feel so vulnerable and put on the spot? He’d always chalked it up to some mysterious function of angel mojo, but apparently it had always just been _Cas_.

“Um…” Dean started, unsure of just how to answer that without doubling down on the whole _pinned to the wall_ feeling.

“You were restored to yourself, and you needed to rest and recover. You were safe at home with Sam. There was nothing more I could do to help you--”

“You coulda just stayed,” Dean replied before his brain had a chance to stop his mouth. “I mean, just for a little while. I guess. You didn’t have to run off like I had the plague or some shit.”

That stopped Cas in his tracks. “If you’d had the plague, I could’ve healed you.”

“Not the point, Cas,” Dean said, taking a small step back from him now that he felt far too exposed. But if his feeling from that morning had been right-- that maybe finally being honest about all this shit he’d kept bottled up for years could do more good than harm for once-- it might be better for both of them to just tell the truth, as awkward and terrifying as that might be. “Maybe I just wanted you to stick around just because… I _wanted you to stick around_. And maybe I still do.”

Cas looked utterly perplexed at that point, and blinked up at Dean as he tried to process his words. “You just wanted me there? For no reason?”

Dean squeezed his eyes shut for a second and then laughed to himself. “I got reasons, Cas. Try, I like hanging out with you. Or maybe, things are just better when you’re around. Or even, it’s nice to think you might like hanging out with me sometimes, too.”

“Dean, I always prefer to be near you, but you’ve almost always pushed me away. I thought I was making it easier by going before you had to ask me to leave.”

“I never wanted to push you away, Cas,” Dean started, and then bit back the rest of his resentful and not entirely honest retort. “I mean, I know I’m not the easiest person to get along with.” He ignored Cas’s snort at that and charged onward. “But I’ve been asking you to stay for a couple of years now. And you keep finding reasons to leave anyway. And I get it, I do. You got stuff you need to do, and I can’t stop you from doing it, but if you ever left because you thought I didn’t want you around, you gotta know that’s not true.”

A smile slowly broke across Cas’s face and he heaved a relieved sigh. He was silent for a few seconds and then carefully asked, “So even if we never recover my grace, you’d still want to keep me around?”

“Damn right, I do.”

Cas practically beamed at Dean’s borderline defensive tone, and then turned very serious again. “And if we do find my grace… and I decide not to take it back?”

Dean swallowed hard, because he had a feeling that if he said the wrong thing here, it could ruin everything. He could play the safe card he’d always relied on in the past, assuming that Cas would always prefer to have an out, that he wouldn’t choose to be human if he could help it. But he knew this time he needed to lay it all out, not leave Cas hanging or dissuading him from this choice. He wasn’t a baby in a trench coat anymore. Hell, he didn’t even _have_ a trench coat anymore. He’d been around this block more than a few times now, and he wasn’t naive about what he was asking here. Dean had to trust in that terrifying instinct that told him it was time to stop tiptoeing around whatever this was between him and Cas and lay all his cards out on the table.

“If you wanna stay human, that’s up to you. I can’t tell you what you should do. But if you do, then you fucking better stay with me. Capisce?”

Cas smiled, relieved, and nodded. “I already bought a toothbrush. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

Dean laughed. “Nothin’s stopping you from brushing your teeth as an angel.”

Cas just shrugged at that and watched Dean laugh for a minute. “Sam and Baby are probably wondering what’s taking us so long.”

“Let ‘em wonder, then,” Dean replied, pulling Cas into yet another hug, this time in relief and happiness. That was three in two days. Maybe next time he’d psych himself up enough to go for a kiss. That thought nearly froze him in place before Cas pulled away and smiled fondly at him, almost if Cas had been reading his mind. Thank fuck he hadn’t been, Dean thought. He shook himself off and followed Cas outside. He’d cross that bridge when they came to it.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam and Baby were leaning against the side of the Impala, sipping coffee. A box of donuts and two more cups sat on the roof of the car between them, and Dean made a beeline for them, nearly elbowing Baby in the head in his haste to claim his rightful share of caffeine and sugar. He grabbed the cups, handing one to Cas before swiping the entire box of donuts and offering Cas the first choice. Neither of them noticed the conspiratorial glance that Sam and Baby shared. Dean was too busy explaining the relative merits of each donut variety while Cas considered his selection with all the intensity and gravity he’d brought to discussions on stopping any of the various apocalypses they’d prevented over the years.

“We figured you guys would appreciate a snack since we don’t really have time to stop for lunch yet,” Sam said when they’d each picked treat and Dean had set the box on the front seat.

“Don’t matter,” Dean said around a mouthful of chocolate cream and powdered sugar. “We’ll make do.”

“Everything cool?” Baby asked, eyeing first Dean and then Cas, like a mother testing her kid’s answer to whether or not they’d cleaned their room or finished their homework.

“Yes, mom,” Dean said, rolling his eyes as he walked around the car, at the same time Cas replied, “It’s quite comfortably warm, actually.”

Sam nearly spat out his coffee, but he climbed in the passenger seat while Cas and Baby got in back. Dean started the engine and turned to Sam.

“So, where to?”

Sam directed them to a neat and tidy subdivision on the north edge of town. It was the kind of community where every house looked uncannily similar, like they were all assembled from the same box of mix-and-match parts. The Januarys had one of the last houses at the end of a cul-de-sac, with an extra half lot devoted to a large custom four car garage. Dean snorted when he saw it; the only house in the neighborhood that stood out from the rest. He could appreciate Floyd’s devotion to his cars, at least. Despite the wide and inviting driveway, Dean parked on the street in front of the house next door and then turned to consult the rest of the car’s occupants.

“Are we all going in?”

“It does seem like a lot of people if we’re trying to pass as FBI,” Sam agreed with a frown, as if he hadn’t even considered what all four of them might look like strolling up and knocking on this woman’s door. Wearing Hannah’s petite form, Baby might not be an intimidating addition to their posse, but the fact the word _posse_ could apply made it seem like a bad idea anyway.

Dean made a frustrated little noise and rolled his eyes. “Who _needs_ to be there?”

Sam turned and gestured back at Baby. “Well, we interviewed Alice, so we’ve both got that background, but you and Cas are more familiar with the magical mumbo jumbo. You know, on a first hand basis.”

Dean caught Baby’s eyes in the rear view mirror and then looked to Cas and took a deep breath. “Yeah, well Cas is probably the most qualified to handle that end of it, since I was mostly unconscious for the mumbo jumbo part. Why don’t the two of you take this one, and Baby and I can scope out the house while you do.”

Cas’s eyes went wide for a second, and he seemed both pleased and a little bit nervous about Dean placing that kind of trust in him. Not only was this a potentially delicate interview with a recent widow, it was also an interview with a possibly dangerous witch who may or may not have a murderous goddess on a leash.

Sam craned around to nod at Cas. “You good with that?”

Cas nodded once, shot a quick smile at Dean, and then they were out of the car and headed up the front walk before Dean could object to his own rationale. Dean let out a long breath and tapped out an agitated rhythm with his fingers on the steering wheel as he watched them go.

Sam knocked, and a few moments later a dark haired middle-aged woman answered the door. Sam and Cas flashed their badges and the woman forced a concerned little smile and invited them in. The second the door shut behind them, Baby spoke up.

“They’ll be fine, Dean. They’re not amateurs, and we’re right here to back them up anyway.”

Dean grunted and continued staring at the Januarys’ front door.  It was easier to trust her words when he wasn’t looking at her and only seeing Hannah’s face. It’s not like he’d spoken to Hannah enough to have that sort of visceral reaction to the timbre of her voice, especially when spoken with the generic accent and cadence that Baby carried through all her different incarnations and was uniquely her own; just as soothing to Dean as the rumble of the Impala’s engine.

They’d sat there for a few minutes in silence when a little red Honda cruised up to the house and one of the garage doors opened automatically. The car drove straight inside, and in the shadows of the garage Dean could see the young man get out of the car before the door came sliding back down.

“Must be her kid,” Baby said. “Alice told us Miranda had a son. Aiden. Just started up his second year at the local community college and working part-time at the dealership.”

“Gonna take over the family business, then?”

Baby leaned her elbows on the back of Dean’s seat and he saw her shrug out the corner of his eye before pointedly refocusing back on the house. Another minute lapsed before Baby shifted around and then spoke in a deeper voice that Dean definitely didn’t recognize, with or without Baby’s personal style filter.

“You don’t like Hannah much, do you,” she asked softly.

Dean risked taking his eyes off the house and glanced back to see what she looked like now. She’d morphed into an attractive middle eastern man with a light scruff of a beard and deep brown eyes that were both soft and intense. His first thought was _must be another angel_ , but it wasn’t any angel he’d ever met. Baby must be pulling a memory of the dude from the bit of Cas’s grace, or maybe his soul. Wherever he came from, Dean appreciated the change.

“She thought I deserved to die for something that wasn’t my fault. A mistake. And then she punished Cas for it instead” Dean thought about it a little more, and when Baby kept right on saying nothing, his thoughts got louder and louder. “Fuck it. You’re what, like half made up of my own damn soul. You probably know all this shit anyway, so I don’t even know why you’re asking, except for some bullshit reason you want to make me say it out loud.”

He glared at Baby and she just raised one eyebrow and stared at him with that deceptively calm gaze. Fucking angels. Dean sighed and turned back around. It was easier and  safer to keep his eyes glued to the front door of the January’s house, but he could play her little game. It beat sitting there in stony silence.

“She kept Cas from coming home for _months_. She had him running around tryin’ to convince a bunch of angels who wanted to stay on Earth that they needed to go back to Heaven.”

“And all that time, you wanted him with you instead,” Baby said. “If it’s any consolation, he would’ve rather been with you too.”

Dean sighed and shifted in his seat. “Don’t make a difference. He had a choice. Just like the angels they were rounding up should’ve had.”

“Free will, yes. One of the most difficult things for an angel to understand. Even when you give ‘em a choice, most of ‘em want you to tell them what to choose. It’s infuriating.”

“You sound like Cas,” Dean said, allowing the little smile to play across his face. Baby wouldn’t betray his secret.

“Hey, I’m half you, but I’m half him too. Don’t you forget it.”

“Maybe don’t say it like that again, and you got a deal.”

Baby leaned back in her seat with a huff and Dean felt like he’d been slid out from under the microscope for the time being. It was the perfect opportunity to put her on a slide instead.

“So you got no idea how we-- you-- came to be… that… whatever you are?” Dean asked, glancing at her in the mirror again.

Baby didn’t answer immediately, as if she was performing some sort of internal analysis and double checking the results. Or maybe just considering how much to say on the subject.

“I didn’t really understand _how_ I’d been created until we learned the bit about Bia being involved, but I think that’s only half the story. As to _why_ I’m here, I’ve got a couple of theories.”

“Well, I got two ears and nothing but time,” Dean replied, checking his watch. It had been about ten minutes and they hadn’t heard any shrieking or seen anything out of the ordinary going down around the house, so he figured the interview hadn’t devolved into an unprovoked attack by either the witch or her pet goddess yet. “Lay it on me.”

Baby hummed thoughtfully. “You mean you don’t have any theories of your own?”

“Sure, turn it all back around on me. You know what I’m thinking anyway, so you tell me.”

“Just sayin’, I might know how your mind works, but I can’t _read_ your mind. I think I’d like to hear you say it out loud, using your own words.”

Dean glared at Baby in the rear view mirror and crossed his arms over his chest, thinking of a few choice words he could use. She smiled at him and then turned back to watch the house while Dean stewed over everything for a moment.

Whatever brought her to life already had full access to his soul. It wasn’t like he’d be telling her anything groundbreaking here. The groundbreaking bit was actually putting it into words and then saying them out loud. He recalled a hazy memory of a cringeworthy conversation he’d had with Rowena when he’d been under another spell, and wondered how his life had become a series of confrontations with himself that would’ve made Dr. Phil proud. What the hell, it seemed to be doing him at least a little bit of good. Maybe together they could get to the bottom of what had happened. Without Sam around making sad, earnest puppy dog eyes at him and pushing him to talk about his feelings, and Cas around to make this entire ordeal exceedingly embarrassing, it might be his only chance to reassemble the jumble of details that he’d been trying to piece back together since he’d been cursed.

“Floyd and I got hit by the same curse. It killed him, but I lived. Only difference is I had an angel waiting in the wings to stitch my soul back together before it all drained outta me.”

“Is that what you believe Castiel did?”

Dean shrugged uncomfortably. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant series of memories to revisit, for the most part. “I felt him trying to do the healing mojo thing, and I could tell it wasn’t working right. It wasn’t for lack of trying. The curse was eating through me faster than he could heal it up.”

Baby interrupted him with a skeptical sounding, “Mmm-hmmm.”

Dean closed his eyes and accepted her judgment on the honesty of his words. He stopped and heaved a sigh before trying again, reminding himself that talking to Baby was just as good as thinking out loud at himself, for all intents and purposes. She was only gonna bitch at him if he tried to bullshit her.

“Fine, okay. Most of what I remember is the stuff in between the pain. When I guess I passed out or whatever. It was like heaven,” he said, and then immediately clarified. “Like _actual_ Heaven. You know, the greatest hit parade of my life. Only Cas was there with me the entire time.”

“With you in your Heaven?” Baby asked, carefully keeping her voice neutral.

“Yeah, like I could feel him tinkering with my soul, I guess. “

“And that didn’t seem strange to you at the time?” Baby asked, and then leaned forward again, stopping short of pushing into Dean’s personal space for once. “It didn’t seem intrusive, I mean. Into what you experienced in your visions.”

Dean was about to object to that definition of what he went through while Cas was waging some kind of war for his soul against the curse, but his own definition didn’t sound any better in his head, so he decided to roll with Baby’s for now.

“Nah, he’s put me back together before, more times than I can count.”

Baby sat silent for a moment. “But this was different, wasn’t it. You felt it differently this time.”

Dean thought about every time he could recall Cas healing him. He couldn’t remember that first time, what it must’ve taken to scrub forty years of Hell off his soul and cram it back into his corpse, and he figured that was probably for the best. Every time Cas had healed him since then had always felt a little different to him. Hell, every time Cas touched him with his grace at all, it had felt unique.  It may have been the same cooling wash of power each time, but over the years he’d learned the flavor of it like one of those pretentious bastards who use five hundred words to describe a sip of wine.

He’d learned to discern Cas’s mood, for lack of a better word, through the touch of his grace. What had once felt so alien and beyond human comprehension had gradually become more familiar to him, especially after Cas had spent a little time as a human. Maybe Cas had just grown some more relatable moods of his own.

One of the last things Dean remembered before he’d blacked out was a flood of what he could’ve sworn was a sense of determined finality overlaid with a tinge of regret. Like Cas knew it was do or die, and he charged into that fight anyway. And then everything went dark. But before that, there were flashes of recognition. He pushed through a rush of phantom pain and nausea brought on by poking at the memories too hard and gritted his teeth until it passed.

“I came around a couplea times long enough to see him and feel what he was doing. In the… the _vision_ , he felt like he belonged there.”

Baby nodded. “You trust him with your soul.”

Dean bolted around in his seat and made a face at her. “Of course I do.”

“He trusts you with his, too.”

Dean let that sink in for a minute. He knew that on an intellectual level; an instinctual level. It was a different thing entirely having it confirmed by a walking, talking fragment of the soul in question. And that’s when it hit him.

“Shit, that’s why it pissed me off so much, you borrowing Hannah’s face like that. It’s one thing to see our freaking _combined souls_ looking like one of us, however fucked up the accuracy level on your interpretation was. Seriously, you made me look like a girl?”

Baby laughed at that. “You’re the one who wondered if you would’ve made a pretty girl, and I had the power to show you. You saw Cas as a girl, too. So, what did you think?”

“It was just fucking weird.”

She raised both hands palm up. “You like being you, then. No harm done. But now you know.”

Dean pulled back from their little conversational detour and got back on track. He did have a point to make. “Even showing us friends, or family, or whatever the hell Gabriel was, I don’t really have any specific negative feelings toward any of them. But Hannah? Yeah, it’s a little fucked up to feel that way when it’s actually directed at a piece of my own soul. Or even Cas’s soul, I guess. It just felt _wrong_.”

A slow smile broke across Baby’s face and widened into a grin. “Feels a bit strange being jealous of yourself, doesn’t it.”

Dean’s ears burned and he sputtered trying to defend himself while Baby held back a laugh. Her smile dropped after a moment and she turned reflective, still watching the house while Dean tried to pull himself together again.

“The longer I exist, the more I’ve been able to sort through what I seem to be.”

That shut Dean up. There really was a lot they probably needed to figure out about _her_ too. Like if she was gonna be a permanent addition to their household. They’d already gone long past the point of thinking of her as a monster, or just the result of a curse gone wrong, but they really had no idea what she was. It seemed important to get to the bottom of that mystery too.

“If you got Cas’s mojo swirling around in there,” Dean said, waving a hand at her, “can you access it? Or use it?”

Baby’s eyebrows pinched together like she was focusing all her attention on doing something angelic. Dean was half worried she’d accidentally turn herself invisible or something, but nothing happened. She shook her head and refocused on him.

“I can feel it in there, but it feels just the same as your soul. And his soul, too. It was more distinct last night, but now it’s like everything’s blending together.”

Dean squirmed a little at that thought, hoping she wasn’t about to make him talk about his damn feelings for Cas right then and there, but Baby threw him a curveball.

“It feels better now, anyway.” She leveled a significant look at him, and he gulped, having a pretty damn good idea what she meant. “It was like being torn in half before. I don’t know how the two of you can stand it.”

She looked at him with something that almost felt like pity and reached a hand out to rest on his shoulder. “I’m not gonna break his trust, but I will say the two of you really have a few things you both need to talk about. I think you’d both be a hell of a lot happier if you stopped dancing around each other and let yourselves have something nice for once.”

“We, uh…” Dean said, not really sure if this was even something he should be talking about with her at all, but again he reminded himself that she was literally a piece of his soul, and sighed in resignation. “We’ve been talking since last night. Some.”

“Well,” Baby replied, looking both relieved and pleased. “I’d say that’s probably a good start.”

“We’ll see.” Dean looked down at his hand resting on the leather seat beside him. “See if he feels the same way if everything goes back to how it was before.”

Baby whispered conspiratorially, “I don’t think it makes a difference to him either way. You know he’s been letting his grace burn out for a while now, right? He wants you to ask him to stay. Permanently. Use all the big boy words. But I don’t think that comes as a surprise to you, either.”

“Huh,” Dean said, just watching her now. It really hadn’t come as a surprise, but that still didn’t answer his question. He and Cas were gonna talk plenty, just as soon as they wrapped up this case. To do that, they had to figure Baby out before she self-destructed on them, or before someone else woke up gravely injured only to find themselves being looked after by the personification of their car. “So if his mojo’s still in there, maybe you’ve been using it up to, ah... I dunno. Generate your meatsuit.”

Her eyes went wide and slightly horrified. “I’m not doing it on purpose!”

“Hey, hey. It’s okay. We don’t even know that’s what’s happening. It was just a thought.”

They were quiet for another moment while Baby recovered. She asked in a very small voice, “If that’s true, then what happens when I’ve used it all up? What’ll happen to your souls then? And to me?”

Dean was trying to figure out how to answer her when he caught movement out the corner of his eye. Sam and Cas were on the doorstep again, handing Mrs. January a business card and thanking her for her time. Dean turned all the way around in his seat to face her, to tell her one last thing while he still had a chance.

“Don’t you worry about it, okay? Far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to whatever part of me is keeping you alive, you hear? You took care of me my whole damn life. It’s the least I can do for you.”

Baby nodded and gave him a watery smile as Sam and Cas got in the car.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean said quietly. He glanced up at Cas in the rear view, only to see him frowning at the back of Dean’s seat in confusion. He turned to see Sam in a similar state and then started the car. “So I take it the wife wasn’t the droid we’re looking for?”

Sam shook his head as Dean pulled away from the curb in search of a proper lunch now that they’d finished their interview. They could hash out the details just as easily over a cheeseburger.

“She confirmed everything Alice told us this morning, even showed us her altar and the little library she’s got set up in her guest room,” Sam said. “Let us look through everything, and had no idea how her devotional activities could’ve related to her husband’s murder.”

“I guess she didn’t have that spell written down anywhere,” Dean said.

“She could’ve memorized it,” Cas offered. “Or she could’ve destroyed her copy of it after she’d used it.”

“Right,” Dean agreed, shooting Cas a smile in the mirror again. “Like tossing the gun in the river. Get rid of the evidence.”

“Alice has loaned her a lot of her books over the last few years, but she’s always returned them a few days later.”

“But you believe her,” Dean said again. “That she doesn’t know shit about what shish kebabbed Floyd.”

Sam sighed. “Yeah, I do.”

“I do, too,” Cas confirmed.

“So, what? Are we done here?” Dean asked, turning onto the main street and looking around for someplace decent to eat. “The curse is broken. We got no other leads on finding whoever wanted Floyd dead in the first place.”

“Whoever it was, they’re still out there,” Cas said. “They may have made the curse to harm Floyd January, but it could just as easily have killed one of his employees or his clients, or one of the detectives who’d investigated his death, the same way it attacked you. Whoever left it on his desk doesn’t seem bothered by that fact that others could’ve been endangered by their actions.”

“You’re right,” Dean replied, turning in to a diner parking lot. “Some sick bastard’s still out there with the power to do this again. And if it wasn’t the wife, it could be anyone.”

“So I guess we’re sticking around a little bit longer,” Baby replied.

It was as if Cas hadn’t really noticed her before, too caught up in his thoughts about Miranda January. Now that she’d spoken, he turned to her with a look of shock that Dean caught as he turned off the engine.

“Hannah,” he whispered.

Dean shot a confused look back and forth between Cas and Baby. “Hannah? Wait, Hannah was the other chick.”

“This was Hannah, too,” Cas replied, swallowing hard and turning a pained look on Dean. “After…”

Dean let that sink in. Baby went contrite, gradually shifting her form without even being asked, and then apologizing to Cas.

“Dean was uncomfortable with her other form, so I thought this might make things easier for him. I should’ve known it would make things unnecessarily painful for you, Cas. I’m so sorry.”

Baby completed the transition to  a new form, and everyone else let out a little relieved sigh at the sight of Claire. At least none of them had any painfully unaddressed baggage to deal with regarding Claire. Though Dean was silently concerned about the fact it seemed to take her longer to change her appearance than it had before, especially after their little talk. He made a mental note to keep an eye on it the next time she shifted. They had other things to worry about first, so he decided the best course of action was to distract everyone with a joke.

“You coulda picked someone legally old enough to pass as FBI, and this is what you pick?”

Baby shrugged. “I don’t need a badge to eat lunch.”


	8. Chapter 8

Lunchtime conversation covered an array of topics that ran the gamut from the absolute most practical case-related statistics to the metaphysics involved in creating a whole new flesh-and-blood person out of nothing more than chopped up bits of souls. They’d begun by debating how many people in a small midwestern town may have theoretically even _heard_ of Bia, let alone knew enough about her to trap her powers into a cursed object, but quickly detoured into a discussion of various theories on how Baby came to be, and what might happen to her if they ever figured it out.

As for the case, the general consensus by the end of the meal was that they really didn’t have anywhere solid to go from here, except for back to the beginning. In the absence of any further leads, Sam was planning a return visit to Alice’s shop while Dean and Cas wanted to take Baby back to the scene of the crime.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Dean argued. “I dunno. Might have a Sherlock Holmes moment. It’s not like we had a chance to finish digging through Floyd’s drawers. Maybe he had a crazy stalker, or a stack of death threats stashed in a filing cabinet.”

He turned to Cas sitting next to him, eagerly awaiting Cas’s usual backup on what a good idea his suggestion was, only to see Cas swaying a bit and looking decidedly pale. Without a second thought Dean rested his hand on Cas’s thigh under the table and leaned instinctively closer.

“We, uh, don’t have to go back if you think it’s a bad idea.”

Cas took a deep breath and shook his head slowly. “No. It’s the only idea we have.”

“Not the only idea,” Sam muttered.

Cas acknowledged that with a tilt of his head, but he was determined. “We very well could’ve missed something crucial last night. My attention was entirely diverted when you were hurt. And you’re right. Baby hasn’t been there, yet the events that led directly to her creation likely began there. It’s sensible to go back to the beginning again.”

Baby nodded, a thoughtful pout making her look even more like Claire, if that was possible. “Like when you lose something, you go back to the last place you remember having it and retrace your steps.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, grasshopper,” Dean said, and held out a fist for Claire to bump. Except it wasn’t really Claire. Baby raised one eyebrow and stared at him critically until he dropped his hand to the table.

“If you’re all going back there, I want in on it, too,” Sam said. “But Alice’s shop closes in two hours, and it’ll probably be easier to search the dealership after dark anyway.”

“Breaking and entering usually goes easier after dark,” Dean agreed.

They’d just paid the tab and were on their way back to the car when Sam’s phone rang. He stood by the open passenger door of the Impala and answered while the rest of them climbed inside. Dean, Cas and Baby only heard Sam’s side of the conversation, but after a few exchanges it was clear that they might have a new lead to chase down.

“Agent Clapton… Yes?... Wait, calm down. It’s okay… You’d be surprised what I’m willing to believe… No, that’s fine. We’ll see you there.”

“You got a hot date with Alice?” Dean asked with a smirk as Sam folded himself into the front seat.

Sam shut the door and scoffed disbelievingly down at the phone in his hand as Dean pulled into traffic. “That was Aiden January. He came home while Cas and I were interviewing Miranda and sorta lurked around in the doorway while she showed us her shrine to Bia. He said he has something unbelievable to tell us, and asked us to meet him at January Motors at eight o’clock.”

Dean glanced at his watch. “We got just under five hours to kill. I’m going back to the room to catch some z’s. It’s been less than a day since I was mostly dead.”

He caught Cas frowning at him in the mirror, and Cas only hesitated for a second before he spoke up.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay, Dean?” As Dean would say, it _sucked_ not being able to sense how he was feeling anymore. Cas had to rely on observation and Dean’s historically inaccurate self-reporting to hazard a guess, but in the wake of the horror of their near death experience, Cas was less willing than usual to accept Dean’s typical dismissive _I’m fine_ at face value. For once, he didn’t need to.

Dean sighed but kept his eyes on the road as they made their way back to the motel. “Honestly? It’s only the middle of the afternoon and I feel like we’ve been runnin’ for days.”

“Shit, Dean,” Sam said. “Why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Like what? I’m tired and I’d rather have a nap while there’s a monster in town tearing out people’s souls?” Dean rolled his eyes and turned into the motel’s parking lot.

“No, but I wouldn’t have made you drive. Or walk to the mall this morning. I guess that was kind of a dick move.”

Dean looked over at his brother and smiled, slapping Sam’s shoulder. “You got me a donut. All’s forgiven.”

“Okay, then. We’ll give you some peace and quiet and go get a list of Alice’s other Bia devotees just in case Aiden’s lead doesn’t pan out.”

When Dean got out of the car, Sam just slid over into the driver’s seat and was getting ready to back out again when Cas stopped him.

“I think I’ll stay with Dean,” he said, continuing when Sam shot him a questioning look. “I’m… feeling a bit drained as well.”

After a moment Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Probably best we don’t leave Dean on his own, either.”

Cas just nodded once and got out of the car. Baby stopped him from shutting the door and climbed out after him. She didn’t follow him to their room, but hopped into the front seat with Sam. Cas watched them drive off, Baby waving at him through the window, before following Dean inside.

He found Dean already flopped across their bed, and he wondered if it might’ve been better to go with Sam and Baby rather than be a bother to Dean while he was trying to sleep. He hovered near the door for a moment, contemplating going out for a walk or even just going to the motel’s small lobby to sit quietly until Sam and Baby returned. He’d almost convinced himself that would be for the best when Dean rolled onto his side and blinked up at him.

“You just gonna stand there?”

“I can leave if you’d rather be alone.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Dean replied, sitting up and kicking off his boots. He rearranged himself so he was lying properly on his back on the mattress and then stretched out his hand to pat Cas’s empty half of their bed. “Take a load off. Sammy won’t be back for at least a couple hours. He knows how long to leave me alone when I need sleep.”

It was one thing to share the bed with Dean when Sam and Baby were taking up the other bed in the room. With just the two of them there now, it seemed somehow riskier for Cas to just accept Dean’s offer to lie down beside him without fully understanding the bed-sharing protocols for this situation. While he cautiously made his way around the foot of the bed, Dean helpfully cleared it up for him.

“Just take off your shoes, lie down and chill.”

Cas nodded, even though Dean had already closed his eyes, and attempted to follow his instructions. The bedsprings creaked as he sat down and shifted around so that he was partially sitting up, propped against the pillows with his legs stretched out in front of him. He sighed as he adjusted the pillows and settled down, and Dean turned his head to watch him.

“How are you feeling, man?” Dean asked into the quiet of the room. “I should’ve asked sooner.”

Cas considered it for a moment. “Drained. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt physically exhausted like this.”

Dean frowned at that and propped himself up on his elbow to look Cas in the face. “I’m sorry, again, that you’re feeling it now...”

Cas didn’t even need Dean to fill in the _because of me_ at the end. He knew Dean was thinking it.

“Dean, you have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t ask to be cursed, and as long as I had the power to cure you, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it.”

Dean looked down at his hands, tracing the diamond-shaped pattern on the bedspread with one finger. “I didn’t leave you much of a choice though, did I?”

Cas frowned at that until Dean looked up at him with a determined set to his jaw.

“I mean… I was talkin’ to Baby while you and Sam were at the Januarys’ house. She asked what I remembered about last night, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I don’t remember all of it, except you were there. For, like, all of it.”

Cas chose his next words very carefully. “I was trying to heal you. I wasn’t about to leave you alone.”

Dean shook his head, and Cas anxiously awaited Dean’s next words. “No, I mean, _all of it_. Not just when I came to with you kneeling over me with the mojo fingers and the crazy eyes, but in the rest of it. When I was out cold. It felt just like--”

When Dean didn’t finish his sentence, Cas reluctantly supplied the word he knew Dean was unable to give voice to. “Heaven.”

Dean met his eyes and nodded slowly. “Yeah. Like the grigori’s victims felt when he fed on their souls. And you were there with me, like I’d dragged you along for the ride.”

Cas couldn’t help but smile at that, and he felt his heart pick up tempo. “That’s essentially what you did, Dean. You latched onto my grace and m-my soul and refused to let go.”

“Yeah, well, I’m really sorry about that. I almost got you killed too.”

“Stop apologizing, Dean.” It came out harsher than Cas had intended, but it certainly got Dean’s attention. “The curse, or the goddess, or whatever it was had already taken hold of me from the moment I tried to heal you, and if you _hadn’t_ reached for me, if you hadn’t _dragged me along for the ride_ , I believe it would’ve killed us both anyway. You saved me, just as much as I saved you.”

Dean eyed him skeptically, but Cas didn’t flinch under his scrutiny. He’d meant every word. That realization sank in and Dean’s expression slowly cleared. He shifted on the bed until he was sitting up, closer to Cas than he’d been before. Cas watched as Dean bit his lip and took a deep breath.

“How the hell did I do that?”

Cas smiled and shrugged. “The same way my grace has always felt at peace near your soul, I suspect your soul felt the same sense of peace from me. You didn’t even hesitate to pull me with you into your heaven, but it gave me a chance to fight back against the curse. I’m not sure I could’ve done it from the outside. But from within your soul, I was able to… find my footing long enough to banish it.”

Dean still looked troubled though, staring at Cas’s shoulder so long that Cas eventually glanced down to make sure he hadn’t spilled something on himself at lunch. The movement jarred Dean out of his thoughts.

“There’s something more, isn’t there,” Cas prodded.

Dean nodded, meeting Cas’s eyes again. “I asked Baby if she could still feel your mojo rattling around in there, and she said it’s all still in there but everything’s sorta blended up together.”

Cas furrowed his brow, because that actually made sense. After all it had been their combined effort that evicted the curse, and tapping into the power of Dean’s soul not only with his grace but also his own soul had only made their efforts that much more effective. Cas had understood Dean’s natural affinity for his grace, since they’d both used that bond countless times over the years for everything from healing to Dean’s near constant low-level prayers in his direction.

He’d mentioned it to Dean once, after Purgatory, not wanting to ever let Dean feel like he was ignoring his prayers again, but he hadn’t been sure how to even respond to the running narrative of Dean’s thoughts. Dean had been flustered by Cas’s direct inquiry, but his primary concern was that he’d been annoying Cas with the continuous mundane updates. Cas assured him that he didn’t mind at all; that he enjoyed knowing what Dean was thinking and feeling. Much to his chagrin, the prayers tapered off dramatically after that, and then stopped entirely while he’d been human, and then again while Dean had the Mark of Cain. Now that he was human again, Dean could be praying at him at that very moment for all he knew, and he’d never hear a word of it. That silence pushed him to put everything into words that otherwise might be easier left unsaid.

“Your soul knows my grace, so that bond doesn’t come as a surprise. That you were able to find the latent portion of my soul and pull that to safety as well is intriguing enough, but that all three could combine together so seamlessly… I don’t have an explanation for how that happened. That’s definitely not one of Bia’s known powers.”

“She’s not supposed to be able to make soul margaritas?”

“She shouldn’t be able to transform souls at all, let alone grace. She’s an entity of pure force, of will. She may have been responsible for the initial curse, but I’m confident that whatever enabled us to unite in order to resist her was something else entirely.”

“Something else? We never have two random _somethings_ working in the same town. Maybe we’re wrong about Bia.”

“During the apocalypse there were often multiple random somethings all working in the same town.”

Dean grumbled and shifted uncomfortably before settling back so that he was practically leaning against Cas’s shoulder. “Well that was the apocalypse for ya.”

“No,” Cas continued, nudging his shoulder against Dean’s in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion. “I believe that since the original curse was broken when Sam burned it, we must be looking for a second entity, or else Baby would never have materialized in the first place. She came into being _after_ Bia’s connection to the curse was severed.”

Dean sighed and let his head rest on Cas’s shoulder. “So now we’re looking for something that could’ve funneled off our spare parts to assemble Baby?”

Cas laughed. “It seems appropriate to use a car metaphor in this case.”

Cas suddenly felt the tension run out of Dean, and he glanced over to see Dean smiling at him from six inches away. It was the most relaxed he’d seen Dean in as long as he could remember. Even in sleep he seemed to carry a certain low-level worry, but right then it had vanished entirely. He was determined to bask in Dean’s happiness for as long as it lasted.

“It’s good to hear you laughing about all this shit,” Dean said after a moment. “And not, you know, laughing because it’s either that or cry.”

“I have no reason to cry, Dean.”

A bit of the tension returned to Dean’s face then as he steeled himself to recount the rest of Baby’s self-analysis. Hopefully it wouldn’t give Cas a reason to change his tune.

“Baby thinks she might be burning through her batteries, using up… everything she’s made of. Seems like it’s taking her longer to shift forms, and I think it’s taking more out of her to even try now.”

“I’d noticed the same thing,” Cas replied. “I intended to bring it up later tonight if we weren’t able to learn anything from a second examination of Floyd January’s office.”

“I didn’t wanna mention it to Baby until I was sure. She practically had an existential crisis just bringing the subject up. I mean, I don’t know if she’s just gonna get stuck and not be able to shift anymore and we’re gonna have to break it to Claire that she’s got a weird twin, or if she’s gonna start, you know, falling apart or whatever.”

“Rusting, perhaps,” Cas offered, and Dean made a face of mock horror

“You take that back, my Baby ain’t rusty.” Dean teased.

“I know, Dean.” Cas smiled fondly at him.

“So you’re really okay with everything, no matter how it turns out.” Dean met his eyes and forced out the words. “If we can’t pull your grace back out, or if it’s already turned to some sorta soul-grace concrete inside Baby.”

Cas shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t currently supporting his weight. “I can’t think of a better way to be sure that no one else is ever able to steal it in order to do harm with it again.”

Dean thought back to Anna’s grace, stolen from the tree that had sprouted when it crashed to Earth, and the horrors that Metatron had perpetrated on Heaven with a single spell powered by Cas’s grace. He shuddered to think of how violated he’d feel if a piece of him had been weaponized against his own family like that, and then nodded slowly. Dean opened his mouth to ask again if Cas was really, truly okay with it all, but Cas had officially reached the end of his rope on the subject. He leaned right into Dean’s personal space, looking directly into his eyes from just a few inches away so there would be no doubt as to his sincerity.

“For the last time, Dean, I am satisfied. I made my choice, and I’d make the same choice every time.  I’d rather be human and by your side than an angel in a world where you no longer existed.”

Dean’s breath caught in his throat. The silence stretched out between them while the only thing that moved was Dean’s instincts kicking him from behind his ribs to finally make everything as complicated as he’d always wanted to. Or maybe that was just his heart pounding in his chest. Maybe this wasn’t complicated at all.

Cas blinked and slowly began drifting away from him, but Dean was tired of letting that happen. In a swift move he reached one hand around to the back of Cas’s neck and held him in place, letting his fingertips run gently through his hair. The words practically poured out of him in a whispered rush.

“I’d rather have you here too, any way I can get you, as long as you’re happy with that. I probably don’t deserve you, but for whatever reason, you seem to think I do. So if you’re good with it would you mind if I kissed you now?”

Cas only hesitated for one stunned second before obliging him. Their first kiss was chaste, just a gentle press of lips before Cas pulled back to marvel at his own daring, or possibly at the entirety of their current situation. Dean only gave him a moment before lunging up to kiss him again, this time far less chaste.

Dean made a noise deep in his throat that ached with need and relief. Cas met his kisses with equal fervor, reaching around Dean’s waist to pull him closer as if holding on for dear life. They clung to one another, gradually resettling themselves more comfortably as they were both hit with another wave of the exhaustion that had led them back to the motel in the first place. By silent agreement, they held each other close, exchanging gentle kisses until they both drifted off to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

A loud knock woke them up several hours later, followed by Sam announcing his presence in an exaggeratedly raised voice from the other side of the door before letting himself and Baby into the room. Neither Dean nor Cas could truly be bothered to move yet, so that’s how Sam found them, entwined together on top of the of the covers.

“New rule,” Sam said, dropping the keys onto the table with a clatter. “From now on you two get a separate room. Congratulations, by the way, on whatever this is.” Sam waved a hand at them and then walked straight on through the room to use the bathroom.

Baby sat down at the table and smiled delightedly at Dean and Cas as they slowly untangled themselves in their groggy state. The fact that she still resembled Claire and hadn’t even made an effort to change a single detail of her appearance left both of them with a slightly uneasy feeling. Dean shot Cas a look to confirm his suspicions, and Cas nodded gravely back at him. Baby only smiled wider.

“You two seem to be getting along like peanut butter and jelly now,” she said as Dean and Cas slid to their respective sides of the bed to put their shoes back on.

“Yeah, what of it?” Dean muttered, standing up and stretching the kinks out of his back. He turned around to see Cas doing essentially the same thing and couldn’t help the dopey smile that spread across his face over Cas’s rumpled appearance. Between the flannel shirt hanging off one shoulder, the mess of bedhead and a distinct pillow crease running across his cheek, Dean found it all unfairly adorable.

Cas gave a huge yawn as he stretched up and pulled his shirt straight and then smiled sleepily across the bed at Dean as he blinked himself awake. Yeah, this wasn’t too complicated at all.

Baby cleared her throat just as Sam came back from the bathroom and slumped down in the other chair, running a hand over his face, perfectly arranging his hair with a single pass of his fingers. Baby watched the ritual with a mix of bewilderment and frustration.

“That’s so unfair. I tried that,” she said, pointing at Claire’s long blonde waves cascading over one shoulder. “Got my fingers stuck in my hair.”

“It’s his superpower,” Dean said, stifling a yawn and taking a seat at the foot of the bed opposite them. “So did Alice dish up the rest of their little coven?”

“They’re not witches. It’s not a coven. Technically it’s...” Sam started, rolling his eyes and sighing when Dean glared back at him with a patented _get to the point already_ look. “There’s a few other women who are peripherally involved in some of their more general devotional rituals, pagan holiday celebrations and stuff, but Miranda’s the only one who takes it as seriously as Alice does.”

“Plus no one on her mailing list has any connection we could find to Floyd,” Baby confirmed. “At least not any connection that might inspire murder.”

Dean snorted. “You’d be surprised how little it takes for some people.”

“I’ve known you near on forty years, Dean. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. But it takes more than getting served a mediocre cup of coffee or the cleaners losing the occasional button off a sport coat to work most people up into a killing frenzy.”

Cas had slowly inched his way around the bed and finally sat down beside Dean, his hands resting on his knees like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. Dean leaned back enough to casually drape one arm across Cas’s back, his hand planted on the mattress beside him in attempt to make the gesture look innocent. It might’ve, if Cas hadn’t leaned into the touch, sighing as he pressed his shoulder against Dean’s and slid one of his hands over onto Dean’s knee. Baby took the opportunity to grin openly at them both again, and even Sam was trying his damnedest to keep the smile from his face. Dean ignored them both and glanced down at this watch. They still had more than two hours to kill before they had to meet Aiden.

“So it took the two of you three hours to come up with nothing?”

“You’re welcome,” Sam replied. “And we don’t have _nothing_. We found a place that looks promising for dinner, and it’s on the way to January’s.”

Dean was about to open his mouth to complain about what Sam’s idea of a promising restaurant might entail before Baby shut him up. She stood up, whacked him on the shoulder and then made her way over to lean back against the door. “It’s Greek food. Plenty of stuff on the menu that would horrify rabbits.”

“I’m not worried about the rabbits for once,” Dean replied. “But we’re hunting for a Greek goddess. Maybe we should lay off the tzatziki until we’re sure she’s done trying to souvlaki me to death.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Dean,” Sam countered. “I think you’re delirious from hunger.”

Cas was intrigued at the prospect of sampling a new cuisine, so Dean capitulated.

Sam had only slightly jokingly offered to let Dean and Cas take an open table for two in a romantically dim and secluded corner of the restaurant, but didn’t push the teasing too far. Dean appreciated it, and the four of them went over Sam and Baby’s dead-end research notes over dinner. It was an easier topic of conversation than bringing up the fact that Baby still hadn’t shifted forms again. That didn’t stop Dean and Cas from exchanging a few concerned looks and covert touches beneath the table as they watched her rather listlessly pick at her food. Cas had enthusiastically enjoyed everything that Sam and Dean suggested he taste, but he soon realized that Dean had been trying to prove a point by pushing so many interesting new foods at both him and Baby. He eventually relented to Dean’s prodding and spoke up.

“Is the food not to your liking?”

Baby seemed startled by the question and gratefully set her fork down as if Cas had relieved her of the obligation to continue pretending to eat.

“I’m just not very hungry, I guess.”

Cas patted Dean’s knee and cast him a significant glance, but nobody pushed the issue further. Even Sam picked up on the grim glance Dean cast over at Baby, but he was smart enough to let it slide for now. In fact, practically all conversation stopped in favor of finishing their meal as quickly as possible.

By the time they were done eating, they still had twenty minutes to spare before their scheduled meeting with Aiden.

“We should probably head over there,” Dean suggested. “Should we park down the same alley as yesterday, or are we gonna risk driving right onto the lot?”

“Aiden asked us to meet him there,” Cas replied. “We won’t be breaking and entering this time.”

“We will be if he doesn’t plan on inviting us inside for the fifty cent tour,” Dean countered.

Baby sat quietly in the back seat looking out the window as Dean navigated down the side street where they’d parked the night before. Dean and Sam both got out, but Cas held back with Baby, who was idly running her fingertips back and forth across the piping around the edge of the seat and hadn’t seemed to notice that they’d arrived at their destination.

“Is everything all right?” he asked gently.

She turned sad, tired eyes on him and smiled, reaching for Cas’s hand. She gave it a quick squeeze and then let it drop again. “It will be, Castiel. As long as you and Dean are there for each other, it will be.”

It had sounded to Cas like a resignation, but he didn’t call her out on it. Whatever had brought her into existence and subsequently kept her here seemed to be breaking down now. It seemed cruel to press her for details she might not even be able to give him, so Cas once again let it go. He started to open his door but hesitated at the last minute, turning back to Baby.

“Thank you. However this happened, and whatever part you played in that… thank you.”

She took a deep breath and made a happy little sound. “It was my pleasure.”

Dean peered in through Cas’s window, checking to make sure everyone was okay. Baby caught the look of concern Dean was covertly trying to telegraph to Cas, and it finally got her moving again.

“I’m still here, Dean,” she said as she climbed out of the car and Dean stepped back so Cas could do the same. “But I suspect I won’t be for much longer. I’m feeling a little bit… stretched thin on the inside.” She frowned at that description, but then shrugged. It didn’t have to make perfect sense to her, because Dean got it.

Dean looked for a moment like he would put up an argument, but his shoulders sagged as Cas shut his door and the three of them trailed after Sam toward January Motors. “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

“I had a feeling you did,” Baby replied, offering him a tiny sympathetic smile. “It’s not so bad. At least I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna end up a demon, so there’s that.”

Dean laughed despite himself, and Cas nudged him with his shoulder as the three of them walked side by side.

“The magic that bound you together may be breaking down,” Cas said quietly. “If I still had my grace I could tell for certain, but as it stands I can only offer my best guess as to what’s happening to you now.”

“If you still had your grace you would’ve known what I was last night,” Baby countered, then thought about it again before rounding on Cas so quickly both he and Dean had to pull up short or risk running her down. “If you still had your grace, _I_ probably wouldn’t be here at all, but neither would Dean.”

Dean swallowed hard and looked over to see Cas frowning at that, his brow pinched together. Cas studied Baby for a moment, but she didn’t flinch under his scrutiny. His eyes closed for a second or two and then Cas turned that focus on Dean.

“Then I’d say every second of this was worth it,” Cas said and then turned back to Baby. “I only wish it didn’t have to involve undue suffering on your part.”

Baby blinked at him for a second and then snorted out a laugh, doubling over in hysterics before reaching out to steady herself with a hand on Cas’s shoulder. It took almost a full minute for her to catch her breath and wipe the tears from her cheeks. Dean glanced up to see Sam stopped at the end of the block, probably debating with himself whether to turn back and see what the hell was so funny. Dean shook his head and shrugged, but waved Sam off. He disappeared around the corner as Baby recovered enough to explain herself, reaching out her free hand to rest on Dean’s shoulder, nudging him and Cas closer together.

“You do realize that my existence is entirely transitory. I believe I’m beginning to understand what I am now.”

Dean caught a glimpse of Cas, who looked as confused as he felt, but Baby squeezed both of their shoulders and sighed, looking back and forth between them and speaking very slowly and clearly.

“I only take what I’m given. You each offered up a piece of yourselves, and I only came into being to demonstrate the results. The two of you really do share a profound bond, by the way, or none of this would’ve worked in the first place. You two idjits just keep choosing each other over and over again, and I guess the universe needed you both to see it.”

She grinned at them for a moment, using their current stunned state to knock their shoulders together again. They were both so flummoxed she probably could’ve toppled them over like a couple of dominoes. Instead she just patted them both on the shoulder and turned to follow Sam toward the dealership. She only got a few steps ahead before she turned back to see them still standing there staring after her.

“None of what would’ve worked?” Dean asked

“You love each other, right?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Dean and Cas looked at one another, and Dean grunted out a quiet, “Yeah,” while Cas rumbled, “Of course.”

She stuck out her lower lip and then nodded once. “Then I think my work is almost done. Any _suffering_ on my part has been entirely worth it.” A wicked grin spread across her face. “Don’t know if Sam’s gonna feel the same, since he’s gonna be the one stuck with the two of you after I’m gone. I’m sure he’ll get over it. Eventually.”

She spun on her heel and walked away with far more spring in her step than she’d had all afternoon. Dean and Cas watched her round the corner at the end of the block before slowly turning toward one another.

“You, uh, mean that?” Dean asked. “You love me?”

“I believe I’ve already told you that before, yes.”

“You were dying at the time. It didn’t count.”

Cas narrowed his eyes and leaned closer to glare more effectively at Dean in the dark of the alley. “Is that what you’ve been telling yourself all this time?”

Dean shrugged and stared at the top button on Cas’s shirt. It was a hell of a lot easier than meeting Cas’s eyes. “You were gone again a couple days later, and then you stopped returning my calls. What the fuck was I supposed to think?”

Cas sighed, tentatively reaching out to slide one arm around Dean’s waist. When Dean didn’t tell him to stop, he pulled Dean into a tight hug and mumbled apologies and promises into the crook of his neck. Dean raised his arms and held him back. At the end of his litany, Cas added, “I waited three days, and you never acknowledged I’d said anything at all.”

“Cas, I hadn’t said that to anyone since I was four and my mom tucked me into bed.”

Cas pulled back with a look that nearly broke Dean’s heart, but he didn’t look away. “The night she died.”

Dean just nodded. “Those words were poison when they came outta my mouth. I was better off loving people through what I could do for ‘em than just saying it.”

Cas was quiet for a moment, thinking back over those few days before he’d resigned himself to the fact that Dean didn’t reciprocate his feelings, and then it hit him. “The tape you gave me.”

Dean shrugged, again grateful to the alley’s poor lighting as his cheeks flushed. “Yeah, sue me. I’m a repressed teenager. But I do, Cas. I love you.”

Cas gripped him tighter and planted a brief kiss on his lips. “I love you too.”

It felt like the sort of thing that should’ve shaken the entire universe. The planet should’ve shifted a couple of degrees to one side. Stars should’ve flared bright enough to light the entire sky like the noon sun from the power of it. At the very least the ground should’ve quaked or hell, a sudden stiff breeze probably would’ve been the least of the possible cosmic signs that could’ve marked the moment that Dean Winchester finally accepted the fact that he was loved by Castiel ex angel of the Lord without trying to push it away. In fact, he did the exact opposite, pulling Cas in for another smoldering kiss that lingered a little longer than it should’ve.

Eventually he leaned back to catch his breath and rested his forehead against Cas’s. “We should get going before Sammy comes back to drag us away.”

Cas nodded, giving him one last peck on the lips before letting him go. “It’s probably best that we don’t keep Sam waiting. We might have a long night ahead of us.”

Dean left one arm draped over Cas’s shoulders as they headed off toward January Motors. “Even if the kid hands us the whole case on a silver platter and we can wrap this shit up in ten minutes, I think we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

Cas snorted out a laugh and stretched his arm around Dean’s back. “In that case, I’m looking forward to it.”


	10. Chapter 10

By the time Dean and Cas arrived at the parking lot of the January Motors salesroom, Aiden January had turned up and was in the process of unlocking the front door while sputtering over a series of flustered apologies. The boy was only a year or two younger than Claire, and apparently he’d found Baby-as-Claire more than a little distracting. He finally got the tricky lock undone-- and Dean could sympathize with him on that one-- but at least he’d had a key. Dean had been forced to pick it the night before.

As he led Sam and Claire into the showroom, Dean and Cas caught a few words before the door swung shut behind them.

_didn’t think the FBI had such hot agents… was expecting the other old guy… sorry…_

Dean felt for the kid. If Aiden knew something useful about the case, that likely meant he was preparing to share the kind of story that most people were terrified would end with them being forced into a coat with extra long sleeves. It wasn’t the sort of tale he’d be eager to relate to someone he found attractive enough to sever the connection between his brain and his mouth. Dean was seriously considering hanging back outside and letting Sam struggle to get the kid talking coherently before running in to bail him out, but he remembered Baby joking about how Sam was gonna suffer enough over him and Cas getting together, combined with already having made him wait out their ten minute makeout session in the alley, and reconsidered.

He released Cas and pulled the glass door open, following the light down a hallway off to the side of the darkened showroom and the sound of Sam’s calm voice reassuring the kid. They found themselves in a staff lounge decked out like a glorified motel kitchenette, Sam sitting between Baby and Aiden around a table that was almost too large for the room. Sam looked up gratefully when they walked in, and then nodded down at two empty chairs before turning back to the kid.

“This is Dean, and you already met Cas,” Sam said by way of introduction. “Whenever you’re ready, we’re here to listen.”

Baby got up and filled a cup of water from the cooler, setting it down in front of Aiden with an encouraging smile before taking her seat between Sam and Cas again. Aiden drank the entire thing down in a few long gulps and then closed his eyes for a minute while he caught his breath. He crushed the empty paper cup, turning the crumpled wad over and over in his hands.

“Okay, this is gonna sound insane, but I swear it’s all true. I know I’m probably going to jail for this, but I have to tell someone.”

“Hey, hey,” Dean said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Nobody said anything about jail, here. Just tell us what happened.”

Aiden still looked dubious, but he collected himself and grimly went about stating the facts as coherently he could.

“My mom is into this weird goddess worship thing. You saw her altar,” He looked between Sam and Cas until they both nodded. “Right, so mom brought this old book home one day. It was just sitting there on the coffee table, and it looked more interesting than the paper I was supposed to be writing for my marketing class. So I sorta paged through it, and there was this section about using the power of the goddess for personal gain.”

Sam asked him as gently as he could put such a direct question, “You had something to gain by killing your father?”

Aiden’s eyes went wide and horrified. “No! Oh god, no. It wasn’t supposed to _kill_ him. It was just supposed to, you know, _nudge_ him into letting me drop the business major. I just wanted him to let me have a year.”

“A year for what?” Dean asked.

“My band. We were gonna go to LA, had a meeting set up at Death Siren Records. They were gonna give us our big shot. It all hinged on dad giving me the time off. He said I could take a year off after I finished my degree, but most bands never get this sort of chance once in a lifetime, let alone twice. He just didn’t understand that it was now or never for my band.”

Dean groaned and shared a helpless glance with Cas at the mention of Vince Vincente’s old record label, but it was probably safe enough for the kid to sign a contract with them now that Lucifer wasn’t playing rock star anymore. “You can do better than Death Siren,” Dean muttered anyway.

Aiden looked confused for a second, but Sam shot Dean a disbelieving look and encouraged him to go on.

“So you thought you could maybe change his mind with a magic spell?”

Aiden shrugged. “Mom swore by it, said the goddess was changing her life for the better. I didn’t notice any difference, other than she’d been a lot happier lately. I figured, what harm could it do? At the worst, I thought I’d be out one stress ball if nothing else came of it. If it worked, I hoped my dad would’ve let me go to LA with his blessing. So I… I cast the spell.” He shifted uncomfortably, staring down at his fidgeting hands, picking apart the wrinkled remains of his cup. “I _infused the talisman with my will combined with the force and compulsion of Bia_ , or whatever. The book didn’t say anything about killing people.”

“Maybe the spell didn’t specifically mention it, but Bia is a goddess of war,” Cas replied. “It’s an essential part of her nature.”

“I didn’t know!” Aiden said, looking frantic. “How the hell was I supposed to know any of it was actually _real_? It sounded like a bunch of bullshit; goddesses of compulsion doing your bidding.”

Sam calmed him down again and tried to move his confession along to the technical details, since that was the only portion of the whole case that remained a mystery. “So you brought the charm to the office and left it on his desk, hoping it would influence his decision?”

Aiden nodded dejectedly. “I was only gonna leave it there for a day. I figured if nothing changed by the time we left for the night I’d toss it. No harm, no foul. But as I was locking up for the night, Dad texted me saying he had a few more things to take care of in his office, but that he wanted to talk to me when he got home. I thought the spell was working, that maybe he was gonna relent. I almost went back inside to ask him what was going on, but something stopped me.”

“What do you mean?” Baby asked. “Something stopped you?”

“I can’t explain it. I wanted to go talk to him, or at least pick up the… the talisman… but I _couldn’t_. I tried, but it was like trying to walk through quicksand. The next thing I knew I was pulling into the driveway at home and telling mom that dad would be working late. The cops called a few hours later.”

He hung his head and then held out his wrists to Sam, who gently pushed his hands to the table.

“We’re not gonna arrest you,” Sam told him.

“Not like that confession would hold up in court anyway,” Dean said. Sam glared over at him but Dean shrugged, and then focused his attention back on Aiden. “We took care of the cursed squeezy ball for you, by the way. Just be grateful none of the cops or paramedics accidentally touched the thing before we found it.”

Aiden’s eyes went wide at that. “Oh god, I didn’t even think of that. It could’ve hurt someone else? It could’ve hurt me, or my mom, or…”

“Yeah, maybe take this as a lesson not to fuck with higher powers. And good luck with the music career.”

Dean stood up and started for the door. He looked back to see Sam, Baby, and Cas following his lead, and Aiden watching them, completely bewildered.

“That’s it? I’m not getting punished for this?”

“Kid, you’re gonna be punishing yourself for the rest of your life,” Dean said, then knocked on the door frame once before turning and walking out.

They heard quiet sobs coming from the staff room behind them, and Dean stopped in the main showroom to wait for everyone else to catch up. It didn’t seem right to leave the kid there alone, at least not until he’d had a chance to pull himself together enough to head home again. Dean took the opportunity to wander around, checking out the half dozen or so cars on display inside the spacious room. Cas strolled up to his side as he checked out a newer model Impala with a frown on his face.

“It’s all plastic,” Dean said, kicking the front fender with the toe of his boot and listening to the hollow sounding thud. “Why even bother?”

“It won’t rust,” Cas countered.

“How many times I gotta tell you, my Baby ain’t rusty.”

He turned to see Cas repressing a delighted grin, elbowed him gently and then stalked off to the next car in a faux indignant huff. He was peering in the front window of a large SUV when Cas softly called his name from somewhere deeper in the dimly lit room. He gave up trying to make out all the funky computer shit embedded in the dashboard and made his way over to Cas’s side. They stood next to a large stone bust atop a shiny black pedestal that seemed strangely out of place in the middle of a used car dealership. It looked more like something you’d see in the Ancient Greek wing of a museum.

“We still haven’t satisfactorily explained Baby’s presence,” Cas reminded him, and Dean frowned.

“True,” Dean agreed. “You got any ideas on that?”

Cas just waved his hand at the marble head staring blankly back at them. “I think this may have something to do with it.”

“What’s Ben Grimm’s head got to do with my car growing a human form?”

Cas grabbed Dean’s hand and dragged him around to the other side of the statue, where a second face stared out equally blankly from the back of its head.

“Okay, what’s Quirrel Ben Grimm’s head got to do with my car growing a human form?”

Cas sighed. “It’s Janus. He’s the god of, among other things, duality, transitions, doorways, beginnings and endings, time, and travel. And apparently the namesake of Floyd January and January Motors.”

Dean frowned at that bit of information, and then paced around the two-faced bust a couple of times while he put all the pieces together. Sam and Baby had overheard their conversation and came over to get a better look for themselves. Sam looked thoughtful, but Baby seemed to finally be at peace with herself.

“So whatever magic the talisman unleashed in here, you think it woke up Janus enough to intercede?” Sam asked.

“It certainly seems the most likely explanation,” Cas agreed, while Dean looked back and forth between the bust of the ancient god and Baby.

Baby just smiled and nodded, both a little sad and a lot relieved. “You invoked his name, and now I can tell you everything.”

“Wait, you knew all this since the start?” Dean said, narrowing his eyes at her.

“I didn’t lie to you, Dean. I didn’t know that I knew, at the time. But being here, and the two of you acknowledging Janus for what he’d done has... unlocked the knowledge in me. You needed to follow the whole pathway on your own.”

“It had to be a journey,” Cas said, finally understanding. He informed Dean, “Janus is also the god of--”

“Journeys,” Dean cut him off. “Yeah, got it.”

“So do you wanna hear the rest of the story?” Baby glared at both of them until they contritely turned their attention back to her. “Floyd was here alone. There was no one to bind him to in order to save him. But the two of you, you were already bound together. And Bia was _pissed_ that Aiden never came back to release her from her service to him. She’d spent two days sitting trapped in that little squishy ball building up a buttload of wrath. By the time she attacked you, Dean, she considered her bargain with Aiden forfeit. She was out to claim repayment in the form of the next soul to release her.”

“So I guess we were lucky it was me that got hit with her wrath,” Dean said, curling his lip like he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

“I don’t think it was luck at all,” Cas replied, and Baby shook her head.

“Nope, Janus may have nudged you into knocking into it,” she agreed. “He’s kinda got a thing about dualities and the beginnings and endings of conflicts. He chose you, Dean, because he knew Cas would save you.”

“That still doesn’t explain you,” Dean countered after a moment of uneasy contemplation.

Baby shrugged. “Two birds, one stone. Or maybe more than two birds. Maybe a whole flock of birds. You and Cas both got what you wanted most, and Janus gets to make sure Bia won’t be causing any more mischief in this town.”

“So, what, he powered you up off our souls and Cas’s grace, made you think you were actually my car, just so we’d stick around long enough to solve this case?” Dean asked.

“We’d already broken the curse,” Sam countered. “We’d already stopped her before you... showed up.”

Baby shook her head. “No, he needed me to take care of a few things for him. Just being in near you sped your healing along, and someone had to hold your hands and walk the two of you together,” she added, raising her eyebrow at both Cas and Dean. “But he had one more item on my to do list. I know what I need to do now.”

Aiden January finally came out of the employee lounge looking distinctly drawn, but surprised to see them still waiting for him. Baby walked over to him, and without another word wrapped the stunned young man in a hug.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she told him as she released him. “I hope you’re able to make the most of this new beginning.”

He glanced past her to see Sam, Dean, and Cas loitering by the bust of Janus, unconvinced that they weren’t still waiting around to break out the handcuffs and haul him off to jail. Sam moved first, heading straight for the exit and giving Aiden a wide berth and a reassuring little nod on his way past.

“I guess Aiden counts as one of the extra birds,” Dean muttered at one of the faces on the statue before grabbing Cas by the hand and following after Sam.

Baby winked at Dean and then hooked her arm around Aiden’s before guiding him out the door and over to his car. They waited in the shadows until the boy was safely on his way home and then headed back toward the Impala.

“I need to make one more stop tonight,” Baby said. “I got one more job to do before I… fade, I guess.”

“So we don’t need to clear out a room for you at the bunker?” Dean asked, fiddling with his keys.

“The garage suits me just fine,” she replied, patting the Impala’s hood.

“What about Cas’s grace? And their souls?” Sam asked with a frown.

Baby shot Dean and then Cas a look before turning her full attention on Sam. “They’ve got it sorted, I think.”

She climbed into the back seat while Sam stared questions at Dean across the roof of the car. Dean just shook his head and climbed in behind the wheel.

“Long story, man, and I’m beat. Ask me again tomorrow.”

“You should go back to the motel, Dean,” Baby said, leaning over the seat between Sam and Dean. “It’ll be at least another couple of days before you and Cas are up to speed again, so please take it easy driving home tomorrow when I won’t be able to remind you anymore.” She smiled at Dean fondly and shook her head. “Sam can take me to run my errand tonight.”

“What do you need to do?” Sam asked.

“A little B&E, a little covert property destruction, and then I can finally rest again.”

“Sounds like an exciting night,” Sam replied with a grin.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean pulled into the motel parking lot and shut off the engine. Cas got out first, followed again by Baby. She took his hand and walked them both around the car to where Dean stood at a loss for words. Baby took his hand too, smiling at the both of them as she put Cas’s hand in Dean’s.

“This incarnation of me might disappear, but I swear to stay with you both. I’ll just go back to taking care of you like I always have. This particular transition might be nearly complete, but the two of you have a long way to go together, and I won’t make you go alone.”

“Journeys,” Dean said, clearing his throat. “I get that.”

Baby grinned at him and then pulled both of them into a tight hug. She whispered in their ears before letting them go.

“In case of emergency, you know where you can find me.”

She released them and then knocked on the Impala’s hood, winked at them, and then got in the passenger seat. Sam started the car, but Dean leaned in the open window before he could drive off.

“When you’re done playing Thomas Crown, get your own room.”

Sam snorted and rolled his eyes, but nodded, suppressing a small smile.

“And have fun with your destruction of property, or whatever. Don’t get yourself arrested. Cas and I are shutting off our phones, so you can spend the night in the pokey if you do.”

“It would save me from having to get another room,” Sam grumbled as he drove off.

Dean huffed at that as he watched the Impala disappear from view down the road, and then turned to see Cas smiling fondly at him. His confidence from earlier, when he’d suggestively informed Cas that they’d have a long night ahead of them regardless of how the case turned out, was being put to the test now. Not that he had doubts about Cas, or himself, or himself and Cas alone in a motel room together for the rest of the night. It’s just that after years of self-protectively repressing even the tiniest notion that Cas would ever stick around just for him, the sudden realization that that’s exactly what had happened was almost too much to process.

Cas kept right on smiling at him, and that was an encouraging enough sign to get his feet moving toward their room. He was halfway there and reaching into his pocket for his key before he remembered he was still holding Cas’s hand from when Baby had linked them together. Cas laughed at him and slipped his fingers out of Dean’s so he could unlock their door.

Once inside, with the rest of the night theirs to do with whatever they wanted, Dean was suddenly at a loss. He stood there just inside the door, staring at Cas staring back at him as the door clicked shut behind them.

After several long moments of silence, Cas said, “This is certainly a less stressful start to the evening than last night.”

Dean laughed at that and felt the strange and unnecessary tension melt away. This was Cas, after all, and they’d already made it through the worst of all the truly awkward things that had been tripping Dean up for years. All their _feelings_ were out in the open between them, and now they only had to navigate the rest of what all that meant. Like Baby said, it was still a journey, but they’d both spent their entire lives facing the road ahead of them and not turning back.

As his laughter died away, Dean pulled Cas in close, just breathing in his scent and feeling his solid warmth. It was a little strange at first, between the cheap motel soap and the starchy canvas smell of his new jacket. Dean had to bury his face against Cas’s neck and take a few deep breaths to assure himself that this was really Cas, just as he’d always been.

Cas hummed a pleased little sound at the feeling of Dean’s warm breath tickling against his skin and stretched his neck to allow Dean more room to explore. Dean’s hands clenched in the back of Cas’s coat as he accepted the invitation, his lips trailing up Cas’s neck as he answered Cas’s noise with contented sighs and hums of his own. Cas slipped his hands beneath the back of Dean’s jacket, holding him tight and fumbling with the layers of shirts beneath.

From there everything became easier. Dean planted a kiss on Cas’s jaw and then released him long enough to whip off his jacket and buttondown shirt in one go, tossing them into the nearest chair. Cas just watched him for a second and then peeled off his own coat, tossing it and then his flannel after Dean’s.

A shiver ran down Dean’s spine just remembering how they’d woken up that morning, Cas curled around him so comfortably like they’d been sleeping together that way for years. A not insignificant part of him just wished they could beam themselves back to that moment now, to the warm satisfaction of feeling so safe and content in Cas’s arms without all the work of having to get back to that point. Or even how they’d woken up from their afternoon nap. Only this time without the interruption. Third time’s the charm. He wouldn’t be averse to giving it a try with less clothing on, either. On second thought, maybe getting there would be half the fun.

“Is this okay?” he asked, reaching for the hem of Cas’s t-shirt and lifting it just an inch.

In reply, Cas raised his arms so Dean could pull it up, slowly sliding his hands along Cas’s ribs as Cas watched him intently. He tugged the shirt off and tossed it over his shoulder as he crouched down to remove their shoes. Dean pulled at his laces while Cas shuffled backward until his legs hit the edge of the bed. He sat and lifted first one foot and then the other as Dean slipped off his boots and socks, gently massaging each foot before placing it back on the floor.

“That feels remarkably pleasurable,” Cas groaned, his head lolling back as Dean worked his thumbs along the bottom of his foot.

Dean ran his hands up Cas’s legs, resting them on his knees until Cas smiled down at him. “I’ll give you the full foot massage treatment some other time, but right now...” Dean trailed off, sliding his hands slowly up Cas’s thighs.

Cas’s breath caught and his eyes widened at the look of hopeful anticipation on Dean’s face. He reached down and grabbed Dean’s shoulder, practically dragging him up from the floor and into his lap. Dean stumbled and ended up with one knee planted on the bed beside Cas’s hip and the other foot on the floor between Cas’s, awkwardly straddling his thigh. Cas wrapped his other hand around the back of Dean’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

Dean shifted his weight in Cas’s lap, bracing himself enough to swing his other knee up onto the bed. His primary goal was to get as close to Cas as humanly possible, and Cas seemed intent on achieving that goal as well. Cas dropped his hand from Dean’s shoulder and began working his way up underneath his t-shirt, lifting the fabric as he explored Dean’s chest.

Dean’s arms tightened around Cas, inching himself up Cas’s lap until his groin was pressed to Cas’s stomach. He rolled his hips against Cas, rubbing against Cas’s erection as his own swelled painfully within the confines of his jeans. Cas groaned, trying to rock his hips in search of relief, but he was pinned in place. Dean was more than happy to oblige him with another languid slide of his hips that left Cas desperately deepening their kiss as his hands sought out every inch of Dean’s body. Cas brushed a fingertip over one nipple and that was Dean’s breaking point. He wrenched himself from their kiss with a pained groan and whipped his shirt off in frustration, sliding off Cas’s lap to get his jeans out of the way as well.

“Too many clothes,” Dean said, nodding down to Cas’s denim-clad legs while he unbuckled his belt.

Cas had been watching Dean dazedly, blinking up at him as if confused as to why the kissing had stopped so suddenly. He looked down to see Dean’s hands making quick work of his button and zipper and then snapped into action, getting unsteadily to his feet as he fumbled with the buckle of the belt Dean had bought for him that morning. The unfamiliar clothing hadn’t caused him any trouble throughout the day, but now that his mind was completely occupied with more important things, it was proving a challenge.

He glanced up to see Dean smiling at him as he finally got the buckle undone. Dean waited until he had Cas’s full attention and then shoved his jeans to the floor, stepping out of them easily this time and kicking them out of his way. He took two slow steps toward Cas, who was now just standing there with his hands on the button of his jeans and breathing hard.

They’d both stripped in front of each other the night before, but it had been a practical thing. Worry, fear, and pain had been potent distracting forces, but even then Dean had had to turn away when Cas had removed his clothes. At least Cas now understood why. Cas’s cheeks warmed at the realization that Dean may have been imagining something like this, but thinking that his desires would never be reciprocated.

As Dean reached out to help him undo his jeans, Cas looked up into his eyes. “I’m sorry I never said anything sooner.”

Dean froze for a second and then undid Cas’s button. He leaned in to plant a soft kiss on Cas’s lips and then very slowly dragged down his zipper, his knuckles brushing along the length of Cas’s erection. “What were you gonna say that would’ve changed anything before?”

Cas squeezed his eyes shut at the sensation of Dean’s hand on him, sending a wave of electric warmth rocketing through his body. “I could’ve told you I’d stay with you. I should’ve told you that I wouldn’t willingly leave you again.”

Dean pulled him into a hug, overwhelmed for a moment by the conviction and guilt laced through Cas’s words. He couldn’t let that stand unanswered. “I coulda told you I wanted you to stay. I shoulda told you you’re nothing like a brother to me. We really are a couple of dumbasses.”

Cas dropped a lingering kiss below Dean’s ear and then wriggled out of his pants as best he could without dislodging Dean. Dean’s hands slid down his back, and then beneath the waistband of his boxers, grabbing hold of his ass and grinding their hips together. Cas gasped at the intensity of the friction and heat without the layers of heavy denim between them and felt a sudden and overwhelming need to feel it with nothing at all between them. He hooked his thumbs beneath his waistband and shoved his boxers down as far as he could with Dean still pressed against him.

Dean felt the tug of elastic over his knuckles and loosened his grip enough for Cas to drop his boxers to the floor and then work Dean’s off as well. As if he knew exactly what Cas wanted from him, the moment they were both naked Dean pulled Cas against him again.

“We’re not being dumbasses anymore.”

Cas grinned at Dean and then rolled his hips experimentally, delighting both in the drag of his cock against Dean’s and watching Dean’s eyes rolling up and his mouth dropping open as he huffed out a breathy moan. Before Dean could recover, Cas realigned his hips and did it again. Dean dove in to seal their lips together and dragged them both down to the bed.

When they came up for air again, Cas was stretched out on his back with Dean pressing him down into the mattress with his own body. Dean slowly worked himself between Cas’s thighs, torn between staying exactly where he was and just rutting against Cas like a hormone-crazed teenager, or finally indulging in exploring every inch of Cas’s body now that he had an all access pass. He pushed himself up on one elbow, hovering a few inches above Cas until he focused up at Dean, a sort of frantic wonder in his eyes that matched beautifully with the flush of his cheeks and his wildly ruffled hair. Dean committed everything about that moment to memory and then dropped down to kiss Cas again.

Cas arched his back, his body rising to meet Dean’s, pushing himself against Dean in waves as Dean pinned him down. Dean kissed his way across Cas’s jaw, his mouth dragging over rough stubble to the soft skin of his neck where his pulse thrummed against Dean’s lips. Cas writhed beneath him again as Dean raised a red mark on his neck and then began sliding lower, drawing new and interesting sounds from Cas each time he stopped to lavish attention on a new patch of skin. He spent several minutes focused on Cas’s nipples, until Cas was begging him for some sort of relief, grinding his straining dick against Dean’s belly.

Dean continued lower, mapping out the contours of Cas’s body with his hands and mouth. His shoulder brushed over Cas’s erection as he slid down to nuzzle along the ridge above his hip, and Cas squirmed beneath him, chasing after any sort of relief as Dean teasingly shifted to his other hip.

“Dean,” Cas called out, tugging at Dean’s hair.

It occurred to him that Cas had said his name several times by then, but he’d been too shaken by the way it sounded in Cas’s wrecked bedroom voice to understand that Cas had been trying to get his attention. He looked up from where he’d been concentrating on sucking a bruise into Cas’s perfect hip bone. Cas’s eyes went wide and his breath hitched. If Dean looked even half as debauched as Cas did in that moment-- hair a tousled mess, flushed and covered in a fine sheen of sweat-- he could understand Cas’s reaction.

Cas grabbed at his shoulders, desperately pulling him back up into another kiss half-crazed with need. Dean went willingly, his project to learn every inch of Cas’s body with his hands and lips and tongue forgotten for now in favor of giving in to whatever Cas needed from him. This time Cas wrapped his legs around Dean’s hips, locking him in place, as if Dean could’ve torn himself away again.

“Cas,” Dean breathed against his lips as he slowly worked a hand down between them.

Cas opened his eyes as Dean’s hand closed around their cocks. He trailed one hand down Dean’s chest to join Dean’s hand in working them both together.

For a moment they were both enthralled by the sight of their cocks thrusting in tandem through their conjoined fists as they raced toward their inevitable climax. Cas groaned out Dean’s name, and Dean needed to see the look on his face as Cas crashed over the edge. The ecstasy was almost too much to bear, and just watching Cas fall dragged Dean right along with him.

Dean let himself bask in the feeling of absolute boneless bliss, his face hidden against the side of Cas’s neck as his heart rate slowed and his breathing calmed. Cas’s fingertips traced idle patterns on his back and stroked gently through his hair, and Dean shuddered at the touch as he dropped lazy kisses on Cas’s neck and shoulder.

“This was definitely worth the journey,” Dean said eventually, startling Cas out of his reverie.

“The sex?”

Dean lifted his head and smirked down at Cas. “The sex was part of the journey. I guess this is, too, since I’m definitely not done yet.”

Cas laughed and pulled him down into another kiss, sweet and slow now.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be done with this.”

Dean sighed and slowly slid away in search of something to clean them up, easing Cas’s protests with a promise to come right back. He found one of their discarded t-shirts on the floor and wiped down their chests and stomachs before tossing it in the general vicinity his duffel. He gathered Cas into his arms, arranging them under the blankets almost exactly the way they’d slept that afternoon.

“This is definitely more enjoyable without clothes on,” Cas said after Dean turned out the light.

“That’s exactly what I thought,” Dean replied, exchanging soft kisses until they were both on the edge of sleep.

“Good night, Dean. I love you.”

Two days ago, the words would’ve stuck in his throat. They might’ve sent him running. At the very least they would’ve scared the shit out of him. Tonight, they felt like home.

“Love you too, Cas.”


	12. Chapter 12

“So where we going?” Sam asked as soon as he and Baby had put a few blocks between them and the motel. It may have been necessary information, but it was also a bit of self-preservation. Anything to avoid thinking about what Dean and Cas might be up to.

She grinned over at him knowingly and reached out to pat his shoulder. “Don’t begrudge them a little bit of fun now, Sam. They’ve struggled with this for most of a decade.”

Sam darted a quick glare over at her and then put his eyes back on the road. “I’ve struggled with them struggling with this for most of a decade, too.”

Baby shook her head and laughed. “Just try not to be too hard on them while they’re figuring the rest out.”

A hundred horrible comebacks blazed through Sam’s mind, but he figured it wasn’t worth repeating any of them aloud, and instead asked again, “What’s this errand we’re supposed to be doing?”

“We need to go back to Alice’s. We can’t let that much raw power go unattended in her back room.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully and made a left at the next intersection to begin working his way back toward that part of town. “She has no idea what she’s sitting on there.”

“She’s an enthusiastic devotee, but she’s not a true priestess who can channel that much power herself, let alone share it out with anyone who shows an interest. Might as well let her hand out live grenades.”

“So you want to trash her collection?” Sam asked carefully. Things could get out of hand really quickly if he let it. Dean may have been joking about spending the night in jail, but Baby sounded far more serious now and it was starting to seem like a distinct possibility if he didn’t rein this in. “Salt and burn the whole thing?”

“Nothing that dramatic,” she replied.

It was reassuring, but maybe not reassuring enough. “What did you have in mind?”

Baby tilted her head consideringly and watched the darkened storefronts of the business district out the window as Sam zeroed in on the office park with the gaudy purple building. “There are three books and a sacrificial knife in her collection that might come in handy in the future. You should take them back to the bunker for safekeeping.”

Sam did a double take, nearly running the car up on the curb as he glanced over at Baby in surprise while trying to turn into the parking lot. Baby made a disgusted noise and rolled her eyes.

“Sorry!” he said, carefully guiding the car into a spot at the far end of the lot where it would be least likely to be seen from the road. “Sorry. I, uh… didn’t expect you to casually recommend grand larceny as a solution to our problems.”

"It is the next logical step after breaking and entering." Baby grinned at him as he shut off the engine. “You do remember that half of what’s keeping me walking and talking is your brother’s soul, right?”

Sam conceded the point. “Okay, but what about the rest of the stuff in that storeroom? If we can’t leave it in Alice’s hands…”

“You leave that to me,” she said, winking at him before getting out of the car.

“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Sam muttered, but he got out and followed her anyway.

Baby waited by the door, playing lookout while Sam picked the tricky lock. They didn’t waste any time once they were inside, going straight for the storeroom. Baby pulled three large old books seemingly at random from the shelves and handed them to Sam in rapid succession. One of the books was disturbingly familiar; the one they’d found Aiden’s spell in. Sam tucked the books under one arm while he watched Baby dig through a wooden box filled with trinkets and artifacts until she found the dagger she’d been looking for.

“That should do it,” she said, handing the knife to Sam hilt first and then turning to take one final look around the room. “Now you be a good boy and go wait out by the front door. This will only take a minute.”

“What are you gonna do?” he asked again, hesitant to leave until he was sure the whole building wasn’t about to go up in flames, or worse.

“I’m gonna draw off Bia’s power. Neutralize it. Ground it out like a lightning rod, if you prefer that description.”

Sam studied her for a moment, and then understood. “You mean devour it, like you tried to do to Dean and Cas.”

She narrowed her eyes dangerously. “I did no such thing.”

Sam took a step back from her, holding out his free hand apologetically. “No, I mean… you… they… okay, okay. Sorry. You do what you need to do.”

Baby nodded once at Sam as he backed out of the room and quickly made his way across the large classroom and out through the storefront. He’d just reached the door when he felt a frisson of energy race across his skin. If he hadn’t been looking at his own reflection in the front window of the shop, he would’ve sworn a cold breeze had ruffled his hair. It wasn’t wind, but pure power blasting through the entire building. He half expected the rows of jars and bottles on the shelves to come crashing down with the force of it, but nothing moved inside the shop until the wash of power ebbed away and Baby came shuffling unsteadily toward him with a pinched and pained look on her face. Sam took three long steps toward her and then instinctively reached out to support her, but she waved him off with a shake of her head.

“Everything’s gonna be fine. I just need to sit down,” she said, staggering toward the front door.

Sam reset the lock and then ran across the parking lot ahead of her to bring the car around. He knew she was truly struggling when she didn’t even complain that he’d gunned the engine or slammed on the brakes when he stopped to fling the passenger door open for her.

Baby climbed in and then struggled to shut the door. As soon as she managed it, Sam raced out of the lot in the direction of the hospital they’d taken Dean to the night before. Better safe than sorry.

“So, uh… you gonna be okay?” he asked tentatively.

“I’m gonna be just fine,” she replied, slowly beginning to look as if it were true. She was still slumped down in her seat, but she looked comfortable. Content, even. She still exuded a bit of that shivery energy Sam had felt at Alice’s, but it seemed to be draining away the longer they drove.

“You don’t need a hospital?”

She rolled her head to the side and smiled at Sam. “No, I just need you to drive. I wanna feel the wind through my hair one last time.” She leaned over and slowly rolled down her window. “I’d like it if you’d just keep driving until it’s done.”

“Until what’s done?” Sam asked, even though he had a creeping feeling that he knew.

“I’m going home.”

He swallowed hard, but he made the next turn that would take them out to the interstate. It was the least he could do for her after everything she’d done for them.

“Thank you,” he said, pressing down on the gas as they soared along the highway. “For everything.”

Between one mile marker and the next, Baby sighed and faded away, settling back into her true form. The engine roared and the radio came on. Sam drove on through the darkness for an hour, listening to everything Baby tried to tell him through the music she played for him. When the radio faded out into static he shut it off and headed back toward the motel.


	13. Chapter 13

For the second morning in a row, Dean woke up with a warm, comforting weight pressed all along his back and the soft tickle of Cas’s breath against his neck. He lay there for a minute or two, letting himself thoroughly enjoy the experience. He’d been right on both counts. It was better when they weren’t rudely interrupted, and it was exponentially more awesome to wake up wrapped in naked Cas.

He’d only just started debating whether he could turn around without waking Cas when the arm wrapped around his chest tightened as Cas stirred behind him. That made his decision for him, and Dean rolled over to see Cas blinking sleepily at him.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” he said, and Cas smiled at him.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean closed the few inches between them to give him a good morning kiss, which was interrupted almost immediately by Dean’s phone ringing somewhere across the room. He groaned and proceeded to ignore it in favor of focusing on Cas. The phone went silent for a few minutes, just long enough for them to become completely distracted with one another, and then started ringing again. Dean pulled back from their kiss and Cas tried to draw him back in.

“‘S prolly Sammy.”

“Tell him we’re taking the day off,” Cas replied, holding Dean in place with one powerful thigh locked between Dean’s.

“Gotta answer the phone to tell him,” Dean said.

Dean was only just beginning to appreciate everything that Cas had been hiding under his ill-fitting old suit, and as tempted as he was by Cas’s suggestion, they were only about five hours from home. With their case finished, he could drag Cas back to his room at the bunker and lock them both in for a week.

The phone started ringing for a third time and Cas sighed. “Fine, go answer it.”

Dean gave him one last kiss as Cas released him, then slid out of bed to dig through their pile of discarded clothes in search of his phone. By the time he found it, it had stopped ringing again, so he hit redial.

“Hey Dean. You know checkout is in like half an hour, right?”

Dean pulled the phone away from his ear to check the time and was surprised to see it was already after nine. “Yeah, so?”

“Unless you want to pay for another night, we should probably get out on the road.”

Dean glanced back at Cas, who was sitting up on the edge of the bed, leaning down to collect various scattered articles of clothing.

“Dean? You still there?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Dean replied, turning his back on Cas so he wouldn’t just stand there dumbfoundedly ogling him.

“I’d like to get home and shower. My stuff’s still in your room, and I was not about to try and collect it last night.”

Dean grunted. “That’s probably for the best.”

“No kidding,” Sam grumbled.

“At least you didn’t get yourself arrested. What the hell did you two get up to last night, anyway?”

It was Sam’s turn to go quiet for a moment, and when Dean prodded him, he gave up trying to sum his evening up in just a few words. “I’ll tell you over breakfast. I’ll meet you at the IHOP.” And then he hung up, leaving Dean staring at his phone.

Cas came up behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist and peering over Dean’s shoulder at the phone. “I assume we’re leaving now?”

“Yeah.” Dean cleared his throat and dropped his phone to the table. “Yeah, we gotta get dressed.”

“That’s a shame,” Cas replied as Dean turned in his arms.

“It’s not that long a drive.”

Cas hugged him tight and was well on his way to distracting Dean from the task at hand when Dean’s phone rang yet again, with a text message this time.

_I’m at the IHOP now. Where r u?_

They made quick work of getting dressed and packing all their things after that, including their vast collection of shopping bags from the previous morning’s outing. It took two trips out to the Impala to load everything into her trunk, and Dean was relieved to see she was still in one piece after whatever Baby and Sam had done the night before. He patted her trunk gently once everything was stowed away, and he and Cas set out across the parking lot toward the restaurant where Sam was waiting for them.

“You are the only person I know who goes to a place that's known worldwide for their pancakes and orders fruit and fucking granola, you freak,” Dean said as he slid into the booth opposite Sam.

Cas slid in beside Dean, and the waitress was already at their table filling their coffee cups and handing them menus. Dean just pushed his menu away and ordered a stack of pancakes and a side of bacon. Cas seconded the order, and the waitress smiled at them and headed back to the kitchen.

“So, spill,” Dean said, looking around at the few other patrons. “Where’s Baby?”

Sam took a sip of his coffee and steeled himself to break the news to Dean. “She’s gone.”

“Gone as in she wandered off and you don’t know where she went, or gone as in gone-gone?”

Sam shrugged. “We went back to Alice’s last night to make sure her collection wouldn’t stir up any more trouble. She did something, absorbed every last trace of Bia that was lurking in that storeroom, and then she asked me to take her for a drive.”

“And?”

“And when we got out on the highway, she just sort of… dissolved.”

“Huh,” Dean said, as Cas nodded in understanding.

“She’s not really gone, then.” Cas declared.

Sam smiled, sitting back in his seat and thinking about his drive the night before. “No, she’s not. She’s home.”

Sam related the details of his evening over breakfast, pulling out the books Baby had selected for their library to show Cas. He agreed they were valuable additions to their collection, but felt bad that they hadn’t paid Alice for them in any way.

“We didn’t torch her shop,” Dean replied.

“Baby swears she’ll never notice they’re gone,” Sam replied.

Conversation turned to the practicalities that they needed to handle on the way back to the bunker; picking up groceries, stopping to buy a handful of car parts and a case of oil while they were driving through a town big enough to have a parts wholesaler, stopping at the post office. As they wandered back to the Impala, Sam volunteered to take the back seat for a while. He wanted to stretch out and try to catch up on lost sleep, and Cas was more than happy to sit shotgun.

Dean started her up and once again the radio switched itself on. He glanced up at Sam in the rear view mirror, and then smiled at Cas beside him. He cranked the volume and turned toward home.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the U2 song, Ultraviolet (Light My Way). Achtung Baby featured heavily on Baby's playlist, too.
> 
> I'm over on the tumbls as [mittensmorgul](https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/), and a link to this story's post can be found right [here](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/162046126505/the-world-seemed-to-be-settling-back-into-a)


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